against Himself. Is it permissible for a Muslim to say that Allah warned His servants against someone other than Himself, or to interpret His words to the one to whom He spoke, ‘And I have chosen you for Myself’ (41) [Tā Hā 41], as meaning, ‘I have chosen you for a creature rather than for Myself’? Or may he claim that the Spirit of Allah, in saying, ‘Nor do I know what is within Yourself’ [al-Mā’idah 116], meant, ‘Nor do I know what is within someone other than You’? No Muslim could entertain such a notion, and none but a disbeliever who denies Allah’s attributes would say it.”

This also makes clear that they intended to refute the Jahmiyyah, who denied that Allah has a Self, going so far as to claim that what this term designates is something other than Him. Indeed, al-Qādī Abū Ya‘lā mentioned, among their interpretations, one person’s claim that, in the words “You know what is within myself, and I do not know what is within Yourself,” “Yourself” refers to Jesus’s own self, which he ascribed to Allah on the grounds that Allah owns and created it. The meaning would thus be: “I know nothing of the things You have created and own except what You have made known to me.”

This is because the term “self” has a narrower scope than “essence,” “entity,” “reality,” “quiddity,” and similar terms, for it is applied only to what is