by being attributed to Him, although it does not resemble Him.

He said: “His statement, ‘I saw my Lord in the most beautiful form,’ may mean that he saw Him in the most beautiful form, or that he was in the finest state of honour and reverence.”

He said: “What led us to this was simply that attributing an image to Him—glorified be He—explicitly declares the Quran false. That alone is sufficient to require interpretation. This is not a case in which we can say, ‘An image unlike other images,’ because he related it to a perceptible image, namely Adam’s image. If Adam were in Allah’s own image, every human being would be in Allah’s image, and Allah—glorified and exalted be He—would be in his image. Yet Allah has refuted anyone who says this and attributes it to Him through His statement, glorified be He:

‘There is nothing like Him.’ [al-Shūrā 11]

Adam is a thing, so he cannot be like Allah, exalted be He.”

These are Ibn ‘Aqīl’s words. They resemble the statements of al-Mu’assis and others like them among the Jahmīs. This has already been discussed.