negators (muʿaṭṭila). Jahm even refused to allow that Allah be called a “thing,” and the Jahmites would sometimes say, “He is a thing, but unlike all other things.” Yet once the shared universal is denied altogether, total negation inevitably follows.

The qualities by which the Lord is described—life, knowledge, power, and even existence, realness, actuality, and the like—necessarily entail the implications proper to them, for whenever the underlying attribute is affirmed, its concomitants must likewise be affirmed. The distinctive features of created beings, from which the Lord must be declared utterly transcendent, are not among those implications at all; rather, they arise from the specific kind of existence, life, knowledge, and so on that belongs exclusively to creatures. Allah is exalted far above the peculiarities of the created order and whatever follows from those peculiarities.

[The meaning of “the universal shared by things”]

Whoever understands this point well and reflects upon it will see most doubts melt away and will uncover how many intelligent people have erred in this matter, and