that Allah is a true God; rather, they set up other gods alongside Him. Thus, the dispute between the Messenger and them concerned denying divinity to anything other than Allah, in the literal sense, since the expression was not used for anything other than what it was assigned to denote. As for the claim that its original assigned meaning is negation—namely, the absolute denial of any deity—no Arab ever held such a belief. Indeed, they had no intention of expressing it, nor did they originally assign any expression to convey it. Expression conveys meanings conceived in the mind, and they conceived of this meaning only to deny it, not to affirm it. Negating a negation is affirmation.

Anyone who claims that the meaning they intended by this expression in their language was that the Messenger should be sent to deny every deity; that this was the meaning for which they originally assigned the expression; and that their statement, “There is no deity worthy of worship except Allah,” uses that expression in a sense other than its assigned meaning—such a person plainly misrepresents them even in their state of polytheism, let alone their state of faith.

Undoubtedly, all restrictions of scope contained within the wording itself—such as an adjectival qualification, a condition, a limiting endpoint, apposition, or an exception—stand on the same footing. However, they used most expressions sometimes without these restrictions and sometimes accompanied by them. This is unlike the statement, “There is no deity worthy of worship except Allah,” which they have never been known to use without the exception, since they regarded the resulting meaning as false. Whoever regards that as the literal meaning in their language plainly misrepresents them. If he distinguishes one exception from another, he contradicts himself and departs from consensus. This is so