the letter during the inquisition: “Do you say, ‘There is nothing like Him’?”

I replied, “There is nothing like Him, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing” (11) [al-Shūrā 11].

He asked, “What did you mean by this?”

I replied, “The Quran is one of the attributes of Allah, exalted is He, with which He has described Himself. We neither deny this nor reject it.”

I asked him, “And what do those who liken Him to creation say?”

He replied, “Whoever says, ‘Sight like my sight, and a hand like my hand’—Hanbal added in another passage, ‘and a foot like my foot’—has likened Allah, exalted is He, to His creation. This assigns a limit; it is evil speech, and it is limited.