and the object of knowledge, love, the lover and the beloved, and intellect, the thinker and the object of thought—are one and the same.

Your position thus entails a more radical negation and greater contradiction than theirs. They are closer than you to affirming that the meaning of the Quran is eternal while its wording is created. There is no falsehood in their position without something still more unsound in yours, nor any truth in yours without something more complete in theirs.

[Ibn Rushd’s discussion in Manāhij al-adillah of the attributes of hearing and sight, and Ibn Taymiyyah’s response]

Ibn Rushd said:

“As for the attributes of hearing and sight, revelation affirms them of Allah, blessed and exalted, because hearing and sight specifically apprehend aspects of existing things that the intellect does not apprehend.

Since the Maker must apprehend everything in what He makes, He must possess these two kinds of perception. He must therefore know the objects of sight and the objects of hearing, since they are things He has made. Revelation indicates that all these belong to the Creator, glory be to Him, by drawing attention to the necessity of His possessing knowledge.

In short, what the names ‘God’ and ‘the One worshipped’ signify requires that He possess every kind of perception, for it is futile for a person to worship something unaware that he is worshipping it.