what is meant by magnitude, they must be alike. Yet this is among the things furthest removed from their essential natures and constitutive attributes. How, then, could this alone make them alike?

If this is so with created things—even though they resemble one another in some respects and Allah has created a counterpart for every one of them, as the Most High says, “And of all things We created pairs” [al-Dhāriyāt 49]—then what of the Creator of all that exists and the Originator of all beings, the Lord of the earth and the heavens, the Maker of all that is known and witnessed, the Creator of everything, and the Lord and Sovereign of everything? It is also understood that His holy Self, with His names and attributes, is not included in these general expressions.

Whenever He—glory be to Him—is named or described, it is only in a way specific to Him, precluding anything else from sharing in it. When a similar name or attribute is ascribed to something else, it too is qualified in a way that makes it specific to that other and rules out Allah having any partner in any of His names or attributes.

But if that name is conceived as stripped of its distinguishing qualifications—an abstraction with no existence in external reality—it is common to the things bearing that name. Similarly, if an attribute common to the things described by it is posited—namely, the general meaning, another abstraction with no existence in external reality—that attribute and that general meaning are common to the things so described and to existing things. Yet this unqualified