The Prophet—may God bless him and grant him peace—said:

“Whoever swears by anything other than God has committed shirk.”

Yet it is authentically reported that he himself swore by the Might of God, by “the life of God,” and by other such attributes. It is therefore clear that one who swears by His attributes is not swearing by something other than Him; for were an attribute genuinely “other” than God, an oath taken upon it would indeed be an oath by something other than God.

If someone objects, saying, “The person who swears by His attribute is actually swearing by Him, because the attribute necessarily entails the One described and He is the true object of the oath,” we reply: precisely for that reason the attribute is not subsumed under the blanket statement that it is “other than God.”

Thus His knowledge is inseparable from Him and required by Him, and His speech is inseparable from Him and required by Him; every attribute is encompassed within the very designation of the One described. Accordingly, when someone says, “I worshipped God,” or “I remembered God,” the name “Allah” already contains the attributes intrinsic to His Essence. Hence, to say that an attribute is “other than God” might suggest that it lies outside the scope of what His name denotes—and this