and claimed that the subject so described was devoid of both contradictories in meaning, although they are opposed in negation just as they are in affirmation. When he was asked, “How can that be?”—meaning, “How can it be rationally conceived?”—he replied, “Without specifying how.”

Only the ignorant are deceived by this: those who fail to distinguish between something we know not to exist, or whose existence we have not established—where a claimant’s assertion that it exists “without specifying how” is not accepted—and something whose existence we have established but whose manner we do not know, where saying “Without specifying how” is indeed correct.

This is further clarified by the following: if His being devoid of these two attributes were as the Jahmī claimed, it would be known to him through reason, since reason, in his view, is what establishes this negation. He does not claim that revelation has conveyed it. Yet something supposedly known through reason alone, which reason itself rules impossible, cannot be described as “Without specifying how,” any more than other impossibilities can.

This approach, which Imam Ahmad related from the Jahmiyyah, is the very one followed by this founder and others like him. In the ten arguments he presented, he claimed that it is admissible to describe the Lord as neither inside the world nor outside it, with the implications that He is neither in contact with it nor separate from it, and similar claims. He asserted that the science of divine matters [does not rule this out, and] he failed to give a sound answer—that is, he had no answer with which to argue for