and as negating His attributes and denying Allah. There is no power nor strength except through Allah. What the early generations and the imams said necessarily applies to them, with no way of escaping it. Sometimes this becomes apparent, and very often both aspects become apparent. Undoubtedly, they only equated Him with others in these respects in order to deny these qualities of Him, supposing that this was to declare Allah transcendent and holy. They did not intend to affirm a likeness to Him; rather, they postulated a likeness in order to deny it. Nevertheless, likening Him to creation necessarily follows from their position in two respects.

First, they placed Allah and others on an equal footing in these universal logical syllogisms—the comparisons they drew for Him. They made Him one instance of those general categories and applied to Him the same judgments they applied to all the other instances, saying, “Whatever is above something else must be such-and-such,” or, “Whatever is such-and-such must be such-and-such.” Furthermore, they likened Him to others on that supposition, whereas He is not like any other, either in actuality or under any supposition that gives rise to doubt and dispute. Under that very supposition, it is known that He possesses distinctive qualities that conclusively rule out His being like any other.

Second, these qualities that they deny are established in reality and known through the Quran and Sunnah, through innate disposition and reason, and through analogy as well. Thus, when they liken Him to created beings in these respects, they have explicitly assigned rivals