If someone asks, ‘Do you classify extreme corporealists as those who liken Allah to creation?’ we reply: Abū al-Hasan said in some of his books:

‘We classify them as those who liken Him to creation, even if they do not explicitly acknowledge such likening, but reject and refuse it. The Muslim community unanimously agrees that whoever attributes to Allah limbs, bodily members, form, flesh, blood, and composition has likened his Lord to His creation. Thereafter, denying that this description applies to him will not avail him merely because he says that Allah is a body and an individual being without describing how, or that He has a human form without describing how.’

In some of his books, however, he said:

‘Those who liken Him to creation are those who acknowledge and embrace such likening. As for those who deny it, we do not classify them as such. For two things alike are, by definition, those that resemble one another in all their essential attributes. Not every consequence that reasoning derives from someone’s doctrine may be directly ascribed to him.’

If someone asks, ‘Do you declare the extremists among them unbelievers?’ we reply: The discussion of declaring people unbelievers will come in its proper place, if Allah Most High wills. In short, if someone likens Him to creation in what he says or believes on the basis of the apparent wording of the Quran and Sunnah, does not contest what has been prescribed for religious observance, and does not interpret it in a way that suggests such likening to the listener, while believing that Allah is holy and exalted above the characteristics of things that come into being, then the matter is relatively minor.”

All of this is the discourse of Abū al-Ma‘ālī and his followers. He has thus related two views from Abū al-Hasan concerning whether extreme corporealists should be classified as those who liken Allah to creation, and the view they uphold is