and His attribute admits no description, His action has no cause, and His being has no end. He is exalted above the conditions of His creation. [With His creation He has no] admixture, nor does His action entail exertion. He is distinct from them by His pre-eternity, just as they are distinct from Him by their origination.

If you ask, “When?” His essence precedes time. If you say, “He,” the letters hāʾ and wāw come after Him. If you ask, “Where?” His existence precedes place.

Letters are His signs; His existence affirms Him. Knowing Him is affirming His oneness, and affirming His oneness is distinguishing Him from His creation.

Whatever the imagination conceives, He is unlike it. How could that which originated from Him inhere in Him, or that which He brought into being return to Him? Eyes do not resemble Him, nor do conjectures correspond to Him. His nearness is His bestowal of honor, and His remoteness is His infliction of humiliation. His exaltedness involves no climbing, and His coming involves no movement from place to place.

He is the First and the Last, the Manifest and the Hidden, the Near and the Far. There is nothing like Him, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.’”