Moreover, his assertion that the divine attributes must be negated is profoundly unsound. Judge this by the words of their foremost thinker, Ibn Sīnā: whatever in his discourse is correct he borrowed from the Muslims, whereas whatever is misguided comes from his own circle—or from himself—and he occasionally mixes it with ideas taken from the Muʿtazilites. Their claim, likewise, that the attributes should be denied is invalid, for Ibn Sīnā actually affirms God’s knowledge of things on the basis that He is their Originator: He comprehends His own essence and all that necessarily follows from it, for knowledge of the necessitating cause entails knowledge of its necessitated effects.

When presented properly, this line of reasoning is in fact taken from the Exalted One’s statement:

“Does He who created not know, while He is the All-Subtle, the All-Aware?” (Qur’an 67:14)

It is not derived from the words of Ibn Sīnā’s teachers, and Aristotle, for his part, offers nothing of the sort; indeed, Aristotle categorically denied God’s knowledge of things altogether. As for Ibn Sīnā’s discourse that negates the attributes, he says in al-Najāt:

“Section on verifying the oneness of the First: His knowledge does not differ in concept from His power, His will, or His life; rather, all of that is one indivisible reality, for these are the attributes of the true One. Thus the First apprehends His own essence and the order of good that permeates the whole; how could such an order exist and He not apprehend it, when it flows forth and truly exists? Every object of knowledge in the cosmos, and the very orientation of the cosmos toward its source, finds in that source a good that suffers no opposition, a good that follows from the intrinsic goodness and perfection of that source—goodness and perfection that are loved for their own sake. Hence that reality is willed; yet the First’s willing is not like our willing, such that He would have, with respect to whatever comes to be…”