These thinkers maintain that when one entity is living and knowing and another is likewise living and knowing, no similarity whatsoever is thereby required between them. Indeed, the two may differ in every possible respect, for—so they claim—the agreement lies not in their essences but only in their attributes, and that, in their judgment, entails neither likeness nor disparity. On this basis they assert that all bodies are identical even though their attributes vary, and they allege that the attributes through which bodies differ are not intrinsic to any of them; rather, each attribute could in principle be exchanged among all bodies while the underlying reality of each body remains.

Although many who affirm the divine attributes—such as Qāḍī Abū Bakr, Qāḍī Abū Yaʿlā, Abū al-Maʿālī, and others—have espoused this view, it is nonetheless among the most unsound of opinions; its falsity is evident by necessity once the matter is rightly understood.

This group offers a fifth reply to the Bāṭiniyyah: when both the Creator and the creature are called “agent,” “powerful,” or the like, no sameness exists between them in essence. Likeness of essence, they argue, would obtain only if both were bodies or substances. Hence they state that anyone who calls the Lord a body is an anthropomorphist, whereas whoever negates that is free of anthropomorphism. Yet this answer fails to resolve the issue, for their opponent retorts: once you affirm attributes or names for God, the one so described must, by the same reasoning, be a body—just as you maintain concerning those who affirm what you deny and thereby make Him