—for they see no resemblance between them whatsoever. And whenever two things do resemble one another—bodies, for instance, in their estimation—they pronounce them fully identical, maintaining that there is no difference between them save for incidental, adventitious matters.

They further state that anyone who affirms what, in their technical vocabulary, entails corporeality is a mushabbih and mumaththil. This is the method adopted by many scholastic theologians among the Muʿtazilites, the Ashʿarites, and those who followed them, such as al-Qāḍī Abū Yaʿlā in al-Muʿtamad and elsewhere.

The majority of people, however, hold that a thing may resemble another in one respect while differing from it in another. This is the position transmitted from the Salaf and the leading Imāms—Imām Aḥmad and others. Thus they censure anyone who denies every likeness between one existent and another, declaring: “There are no two existents but that one of them resembles the other in some respect.”

Attributes, then, are of two kinds. The first are attributes of deficiency, from which it is obligatory to declare Him utterly transcendent—such as death, incapacity, and ignorance. The second are attributes of perfection, and in these it is impossible that anything should match Him. Likewise, whatever is peculiar to the created order cannot be ascribed to the Lord; He is not to be described by any deficiency, nor by anything that is unique to creatures—for every creature-specific property inevitably involves some imperfection. As for the attributes of perfection that are His, it is inconceivable that anything whatsoever could equal Him in them.