By Allah, I am more jealous than he is, and Allah is more jealous than I am.”

This establishes three degrees of jealousy, each stronger than the preceding one. If his statement, “And Allah is more jealous than I am,” meant not jealousy but merely prohibition, while his statement, “I am more jealous than he is,” meant a sense of honor, this would be an anomalous use of language. It would also mislead the listener, without any contextual indication clarifying the intended meaning.

The fifth response concerns his interpretation of this as rebuke and prohibition. He may be told: You interpret rebuke and prohibition either as speech or as something else of that sort. In either case, you are asked: Are Allah’s rebuke and prohibition—understood, for example, as His speech—of the same kind as our rebuke, prohibition, and speech, or not? Whatever answer he gives on this point, he must accept its counterpart regarding jealousy. For if he affirms rebuke and prohibition for Allah, while we too have rebuke and prohibition, and this is not impossible, why does he not affirm jealousy for Allah, while we too have jealousy, without considering this impossible—especially since this is what the text entails? Whatever he says about resemblance and difference in one case can equally be said in the other. There is absolutely no difference between the two.

The sixth response is that rebuke and prohibition, understood as speech, must be interpreted as either the wording alone, the meaning alone, or both together.