is false. Hence one might say that the attribute is other than the Essence, but one should not say that it is other than God, for the term “Essence” (dhāt) carries the sense of being distinct from the attribute, whereas the divine name “Allah” already includes all His attributes of perfection. Our statement that the attribute differs from the Essence does not imply that it could exist apart from the Essence, for in external reality there is no Essence stripped of attributes, nor attributes detached from an Essence; such a separation is intrinsically impossible.

Thus, when some of the affirmers maintain that He possesses attributes “additional” to His Essence, what their words really mean is that these attributes are additional to what the other side acknowledged of the Essence—namely, they affirmed an Essence yet denied its attributes. Otherwise, in concrete existence there is no Essence devoid of attributes for one to claim that the attributes are “added” to it.

Indeed, the word dhāt is originally the feminine form of dhū (possessor), as in the Qur’ānic verse, “And set right the matters (dhāt) between yourselves” (8:1), and His saying, “All-Knowing of what lies within (dhāt) the breasts” (35:38). By its nature the term demands a genitive construction, but later theologians detached it from that construction and employed it as an independent noun, saying “the Essence.” In its true sense it means “that which possesses attributes”; therefore, whenever the word dhāt is spoken it necessarily entails attributes. It is impossible—in external reality, in rational conception, or in language—to posit an Essence bereft of attributes. To imagine such a thing is as absurd as imagining blackness that is not a color, knowledge without a knower, or a knower without knowledge—each an impossibility.

These points are elaborated elsewhere. What matters here is that the argument by which they deny the divine attributes—resting on the claim that affirming them amounts to affirming “composition”—is built upon ambiguous, equivocal terms that mislead. When they say, “Affirming the attributes entails composition,”