distant resemblance is utterly remote from the realities of both. Yet things whose realities differ enormously may resemble one another in some respect, namely, the respect they share. The most general of these shared features is this actual existence and being. Whoever directs his attention to this is considering what is furthest removed from the Lord’s reality. Many of these people believe that they have grasped His reality, or that He has no reality beyond this. Such people go further than almost anyone in likening their Lord to everything. They have made everything a rival and an equal to Him by identifying His reality with absolute existence, which is affirmed of every existent. Thus, they are among those who associate partners with Allah most grievously.

Hence those among them who profess union with God say that He is the existence of everything, that He is the existence of all existing things, and similar statements constituting some of the gravest forms of polytheism and negation.

The fundamental point here is that sharing something or resembling one another in some respect—whether in what is denoted by “existence,” “living,” or something else—does not in any way entail sameness. Rather, it entails a kind of resemblance that may fall far short of sameness. Al-Rāzī frequently supposes that sharing something amounts to sameness, and so he passes judgment on