reason. Thus, regarding what you claim to affirm, you and your imams must either affirm what you deny, thereby combining negation and affirmation, or affirm something that has no reality either outside the mind or within it. Both those who deny the attributes and those who affirm them put this argument to people such as al-Ash‘arī, al-Khattābī, al-Qādī Abū Ya‘lā, and others from the various groups.

Those who affirm the attributes also say: How have you allowed yourselves to exceed what the Quran and Sunnah require in negation, while falling short of what they require in affirmation? Yet you objected to the imams of the religion for refuting an innovation introduced by the Jahmiyyah, whose substance is to deny the existence of the Lord Most High and the reality of His being. The imams expressed their refutation through a particular formulation, affirming it to establish the meaning those people had denied. Where, then, do the Quran and Sunnah state that it is forbidden to refute falsehood using an expression