the name, or like the second category, allowing scope for figurative and nonliteral interpretation? What requires distinguishing this category from the other two and adopting the position you have described concerning it?”

The answer is that what prevented them from taking these attributes according to the literal implications of what they ordinarily denote is that this would lead us to liken Allah to His creation and draw comparisons between them—something negated of Allah. As for interpreting them in the other way, the Book itself precludes this. For when you examine its wording, you find that it does not admit those people’s interpretation and cannot accommodate it. Do you not see that He says:

“What prevented you from prostrating to what I created with My two hands?” [Sād 75]

The letter y is doubled in the possessive ending, unequivocally establishing the dual. The Arabs use this form only where there can be no third, as when a man says, “Give me back my two dirhams,” when he has no others. Likewise, the Exalted says, relating that Shuayb said to Moses, peace be upon him:

“I wish to marry one of these two daughters of mine to you.” [al-Qasas 27]

For he had no others. Once the dual is firmly established, it is not