a literal sense, as with existence, essence, knowledge, power, will, and the other affirmative attributes, as we explained earlier.

If they say:
“The thing to which the attribute relates does not permit the ascription of a real hand, since Adam was a body, and ascribing an act performed by the hand in relation to him entails contact with the hand performing the act. This is impossible, because the Creator’s hand and essence do not admit contact with bodies.”

This argument is invalid. When we affirm the hand as an attribute of Allah, Most High, in the manner we have described, contact is excluded, while the act expressly ascribed to it in the text is established with certainty. Thus, we deny what consensus denies and affirm what the text and its express wording affirm. In this respect, the same ruling applies to it as to the essence, without disagreement.

Second:
This would follow only if an act necessarily required contact in every circumstance. Yet we find an action in one object producing an effect in another without any contact between them, despite their both being bodies. This is what we observe with a lodestone: it causes iron to move and leave its place without contact occurring between the agent and the object acted upon. The cause at work may lie between the agent and the object acted upon, thereby making contact unnecessary. Such a thing is plain and admits of no obscurity. Once it has been established that there is no way