and by the unanimous consensus of the Muslims, indeed by what is necessarily known within the religion of Islam.
[2- Their statement: He is One in His attributes; none resembles Him]
Likewise, there is the second category, namely their assertion, “None resembles Him in His attributes.” Among all nations there is no one who has ever affirmed an eternal being identical to Him in His very essence—whether he claimed that this being shares with Him or that it performs no act at all. Rather, anyone who likens a creature to Him does so only with respect to certain limited aspects.
Reason itself establishes the impossibility of any created thing being His equal and sharing with Him in what is necessary, possible, or impossible, for that would entail combining two mutually exclusive opposites, as noted earlier. Reason further shows that whenever two self-subsistent entities exist, some common denominator must be shared between them—such as the bare notions of “existence,” “self-subsistence,” “essence,” and the like—and that denying this shared element would amount to absolute negation. At the same time, one must affirm the unique qualities of Lordship, as already explained.
[Monotheism according to the various Jahmiyyah factions]
Subsequently, the Jahmiyyah—from among the Mu‘tazilah and others—folded the denial of the divine attributes into what they termed “monotheism.” Thus, anyone who said that Allah possesses knowledge or power, or that He