These ignorant people initially understand the Creator’s attributes by likening them to those of created beings. They then deny and nullify what they have thus understood. They understand these attributes only in terms peculiar to created beings and then deny their import. In doing so, they reject the distinctive qualities and attributes that rightfully belong to the Lord, deviate concerning Allah’s names and signs, and depart from rational argument and revealed scripture. They are thus left with neither sound reason nor authentic revelation.

Yet they must inevitably affirm some of the names and attributes affirmed by those who uphold them. When they affirm some and deny others, they are asked: “What distinguishes what you affirm from what you deny? Why should one be understood literally but not the other?” They have no answer whatsoever. Their ignorance and error thus become manifest in terms of both divine revelation and divine decree.

I have carefully considered the statements of the generality of those who deny any of the names and attributes affirmed by the Messengers, and I have found them all inconsistent. The arguments they use to deny certain attributes are analogous to those used by others to deny the attributes they themselves affirm. They must therefore either affirm both or deny both. If they deny both, they must ultimately affirm both the Necessary Existent and His nonexistence. This is the endpoint reached by these extreme, heretical negators among the Qarmatians and the extremists among the adherents of philosophy. For they proceed to deny both sides of a contradiction, yet just as two contradictories cannot both be true, neither can they both be false.

Moreover, they must conceive of, and give expression to, that of which they deny both contradictories, since judgment presupposes conception. Whenever they conceive of it and express it—as when they call it “the Existent,” “the Necessary,” or whatever else they may say—they are bound to affirm a common element of meaning, analogous to what they would be bound to affirm in what they have denied.