Yet the moment we divested Him of attributes and relations, and declared Him sanctified above all qualities and marks, you faulted us and branded us “deniers.”

But is not denial (taʿṭīl) precisely the negation to which your own description of the Deity inevitably leads? For when you link your Originator and Creator to anything by which His creatures are characterized—whether through a spoken term or an inward conception—while the thing so described among creation is neither originator, nor creator, nor fashioner, it then becomes conceivable that your very Originator and Fashioner, from that same standpoint by which you have come to know Him, might resemble His creation. The creature whom you have already ruled out as an originator, creator, or fashioner could, from that aspect, make it permissible for Him as well to be no originator, no creator, and no fashioner. Moreover, whatever has something other than itself prefaced to it is thereby stripped of what follows it.

So which of the two parties is more rightly charged with taʿṭīl: the people of “realities,” who affirm Him in the manner they have set forth, or you, who negate what you yourselves affirm? Since your profession of tawḥīd culminates in negation, while ours leads to pure affirmation, what boast could be greater than grasping the realities and standing upon the true ways?

The substance of his argument is this: when you attribute your Creator and Originator to anything by which His creation is described—whether by voiced expression or mental conception—such as your saying, “Possessor of power,” “Possessor of knowledge,” and the like, where the Essence is linked to Its attributes so that one says, “an Essence endowed with knowledge, power, life,” and so forth, while the thing so characterized is not itself a creator, it becomes allowable that He, too, be non-originator and non-creator. Such attribution is, in fact, to liken Him to creation.