, knowing, or powerful belongs to a single kind whose members are alike. These people have assigned Allah an equal, a namesake, a counterpart, and a rival in every one of His names and attributes. This entails that every body is an equal, a likeness, and a counterpart to Allah—even a bug or a mosquito—and that every living being is Allah’s equal, counterpart, and namesake. All of this rests on the claim that everything bearing these names and possessing these attributes belongs to a single kind whose members are alike. This is among the gravest forms of equating others with Allah and setting up rivals to Him.

Then they denied all this of Allah, thereby denying Him altogether and stripping Him of His attributes. Thus they became both polytheists and negators of His attributes. Accordingly, the monists among them permitted the worship of anything, regarded everything as both worshipper and object of worship, and permitted every form of polytheism in the world. They thus combined all the sayings and deeds of the polytheists.

Such is their likening Allah to others, equating others with Him, associating partners with Him, and comparing Him to His creation with respect to His affirmative attributes. As for their equating others with Him and likening Him to them through the negations they ascribe to Him, they