by directly denoting it, by including it within its meaning, or by any evident implication, but only through an obscure implication of a kind unsuitable for establishing what a word signifies. For they would have to be told: “The terms ahad and wāhid (‘one’) exclude plurality.” That much is evident. Then they would have to be told: “Nothing that you see or know to exist is one, because its right side is not its left side, and its top is not its bottom. Anything in which one part is distinguishable from another is neither wāhid nor ahad (‘one’).”

Clearly, this does not occur to people in general; indeed, they cannot even conceive of it without considerable difficulty and effort. Once they do conceive of it, their innate dispositions reject it, and they deny that this is the language in which they were addressed. It would also entail saying that the sun is not one, the moon is not one, each of these stars is not one, each of the heavens is not one, and each human being is not one. Likewise, no eye, hand, foot, eyebrow, nose, tooth, lip, head, tree, leaf, fruit, or anything else is one, since in all these things one side is distinguishable from another, and the top from the bottom.

The tenth point is that this argument is used by those who deny all the attributes, who say that Allah has neither knowledge, nor power, nor life. For a multiplicity of