He asked, “Have you sensed it or felt it by touch?”

He replied, “No.”

He said, “So too with Allah: no face of His is seen, no voice of His is heard, and no scent of His is smelled. He is hidden from sight and is not in one place rather than another.”

This account that Imām Ahmad related of the polytheist Sumanīs’ debate with Jahm agrees with what heresiographers and theologians report about them: they acknowledge no knowledge except that derived from sense perception. Yet some people may say that what they meant by this was that whatever a person cannot perceive through his senses, he