subject, and added a limit to His attributes. Exalted is Allah above that!

What these people ought to do—may Allah safeguard us and them—is recognize that Allah’s attributes may be derived only from the Book or the words of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, not from the words of any other person, whoever he may be, however high or low his rank, and whether he lived in earlier or later times. For these attributes cannot be known through analogy or independent reasoning, leaving no room for personal opinions or speculation.

Moreover, this account has been transmitted to us with the wording that he was asked, “Do you know our Lord in earnest (bi-jidd)?” He replied, “Yes, we know our Lord in earnest (bi-jidd)”—with jīm, not hā.

Some of them claimed that it is permissible to say that He, Most High, has a limit unlike other limits, just as we say that He has a hand unlike other hands. The reply to him is that we only had to say “a hand unlike other hands” because the hand is mentioned in the Quran and the Sunnah; it therefore had to be accepted and could not be rejected. Where, then, is a limit mentioned in the Book and the Sunnah, so that we might say “a limit unlike other limits,” just as we say “a hand unlike other hands”?

Suppose an ignorant person were to say “a head unlike other heads,” drawing an analogy with our statement “a hand unlike other hands.” Would not the argument against him be precisely what we have stated concerning a limit: since the hand is mentioned, it must be affirmed, whereas, since there is no mention of