nothing that exists can be conceived otherwise. Thus, if you explain “the One” to these people as that which is neither a body nor a substance, they will tell you that you have defined it as something nonexistent—just as if you defined it as that which is neither creator nor creature, or neither eternal nor brought into existence. You must therefore first establish the existence of something other than a body before you can explain the term “the One” in this way. If your argument depends on this premise, then, were that premise established, you would have no need of these inconclusive arguments that you described as scriptural.

The ninth point is that the claim that the term “the One” cannot be applied to a body or a substance is neither explicitly conveyed by the language nor apparent from it. Rather, if it is correct, it can only be known through these obscure premises over which people throughout the world disagree profoundly. Clearly, it is not permissible to convey one's meaning to an audience by such a method. This is not the clear conveyance of the message with which Allah described the Messenger. He also described His Book as a clarification for mankind, yet this offers no clarification whatsoever.

This is especially so since those people used the terms wāhid and ahad (“one”) in their speech, while knowing only bodies or what subsists in them, and applied these terms only to such things. If the intention in using this expression was to explain to them that it meant something that is not a body, they would have been addressed with the opposite of what their language meant. Even supposing that their language does not exclude this meaning, it does not signify it