invented by the Jahmiyyah, which neither the Book nor the Sunnah nor any imam has stated. Likewise, making likening Allah to His creation the opposite of monotheism, and interpreting such likening as the affirmation of the attributes, is also false. For the opposite of monotheism is associating partners with Allah Most High. Although likening Him to His creation is incompatible with monotheism, this does not mean what they themselves call likening. They assign meanings names that they and their forefathers have coined, for which Allah has sent down no authority, and then base praise and blame on those names. Whoever bases praise and blame on names for which Allah has revealed no authority clarifying what He praises and condemns has introduced into religion something Allah Most High has not authorized. This is not the place to discuss and explain this at length.

[For] the closer anyone is to denying the divine attributes, and the further he is from the Quran and Islam, the more fully he qualifies for what you call monotheism and divine transcendence in this sense.

The Mu‘tazilah have a greater claim to this than they do, because they go further in denying the attributes and multiplicity, and in denying those things whose affirmation they regard as likening Allah to His creation. The philosophers have a greater claim to this than the Mu‘tazilah, and the adherents of the unity of existence have a greater claim to it than the philosophers. Thus, on the basis of this terminology and reformulation they have introduced, they lay claim to degrees of monotheism, realization, and gnosis that these others cannot refute without overturning the innovated principles on which they have agreed with them. And it is