one, namely the First Intellect. Then He said:

“So flee to Allah. Indeed, I am a clear warner to you from Him. (50) And do not set up another god alongside Allah. Indeed, I am a clear warner to you from Him. (51)” [al-Dhāriyāt 50-51]

Thus He commanded them to flee to Him and not to set up another god alongside Him. Whoever seeks to deny anything of Him or affirm anything of Him by equating Him with anything else has associated partners with Him and fallen into the very thing from which he fled. Nothing saves him except fleeing to Allah alone.

The seventeenth argument: To say of all these matters affirmed of the Lord, “The most that can be said is that they are essential and inseparable, admitting neither separation nor cessation,” is unsound. For this is not the most that can be said, nor is this what distinguishes the Lord of all worlds from some of His creatures. Rather, the extent of their dissimilarity and lack of equivalence is beyond the grasp of any rational mind. Any conceivable common element involving some sort of resemblance is so far removed from the actual reality that it implies no equivalence in any respect. For these matters do not imply equivalence between two created existences; all the more, then, they do not imply it between the existence of the Lord, the Creator, and the existence of a creature.

This is like someone saying: “If He is living, knowing, and powerful, and the servant is living, knowing, and powerful, then it is established that He is composite, or that He is like the servant, and so forth. The most that can be said is that these names apply necessarily to the former, but not necessarily to the latter.” Or someone might say: “If He is described