only Allah knows the number. By “division” here, scholars and ordinary people alike mean separating the parts of a thing from one another, so that one occupies a spatial region separate from the other, making them distinct in a way that allows one to be disposed of independently of the other.

If this is the plain meaning of “division” in people’s language and customary usage, then, when he subsequently says, “It is either divided or not,” his opponent chooses the negative. For Allah is not divided: He is not two things or several things, each occupying a spatial region separate from the others, like objects that have been divided. We know of no rational person who says this.

Whatever is divided in this sense is two entities, each existing independently. No one has ever said that Allah, or the Creator of the world, is two distinct entities, each existing independently, except for what is reported of certain dualists who hold that the source of the world is light and darkness, both eternal.