“Abd Allāh ibn Sālih narrated to us, from Abd al-Azīz ibn Abd Allāh ibn Abī Salama, that he said: ‘To proceed: I have understood your question concerning the ongoing discussion among the Jahmiyyah and their opponents about the attributes of the Most Great Lord, whose greatness surpasses description and measurement, whose attributes tongues are powerless to explain, and whose measure minds cannot comprehend.’

—Until he said:

‘None but He knows how He is. How can one who dies and decays know the measure of Him who neither dies nor decays? How could any attribute of His have a limit or an endpoint that anyone could know, or its measure be defined by anyone describing it?

The proof that minds are incapable of comprehending the reality of His attributes is their inability to comprehend the reality of what the Lord has not described of Himself, given your inability to know the measure of the attributes He has described. If you do not know the measure of those He has described, why burden yourself with trying to know what He has not described? Can you thereby find guidance toward any act of obedience to Him, or be deterred from any act of disobedience to Him?

—He continued at length, until he said—:

As for the one who denies what the Lord has described of Himself through excessive speculation and strained reasoning, the devils have led him astray on earth, bewildered. He then began to argue—as he claims—for denying what has been described