the Lord are not composed in this way. Only those who affirm indivisible atoms maintain this.
Likewise, whoever claims that the Lord is assembled and composed, meaning that He is susceptible to separation, division, and partition, is among the most disbelieving and ignorant of people. His view is worse than that of those who say that Allah has a child, meaning that a part separated from Him and became His child. We have discussed this at length in the commentary on “Say, ‘He is Allah, One,’” and elsewhere.
Likewise, if He is said to be a body, meaning that He is composed of indivisible atoms or of matter and form, this is false. Indeed, it is false even of created things, so how much more so of the Creator, glorified and exalted is He! This view may have been held by some corporealists among the Hishāmiyya, the Karrāmiyya, and others reported to hold corporealist views. Some of these maintain that every body is composed of indivisible atoms, while also saying that the Lord is a body. I believe this is the position of some of the Karrāmiyya, for they differ over the existence of indivisible atoms, although they all agree that He, glorified is He, is a body.
They are, however, reported to disagree over what is meant by “body”: does it mean that He exists and subsists in Himself, or that He is composite? The position commonly reported from Abū al-Haysam and other speculative theologians among them is that the intended meaning is that He exists, subsists in Himself, and can be pointed to—not that He is assembled and composed.
Even those who deny that Allah is a body have acknowledged that these people are not unbelievers, since they have not affirmed any unsound meaning concerning Allah Most High. They have, however, said that these people erred in calling everything that subsists in itself, or whatever is