its subject exists—and those that may depart from their subject. The former include a body’s spatial location, or indeed a human being’s animality and rationality: as long as he remains human, these attributes never leave him.
As for your claim that an accident cannot persist for two successive instants, this is a position in which you stand alone among all rational people. You have obstinately denied sensory evidence, resorting to sophistry to escape these decisive objections. Moreover, you maintain that its like is continually renewed; yet this is precisely what it means for an accident to persist. This resembles your assertion that He is seen without the beholder either facing Him or having his back to Him, and without turning toward Him in any direction. Here too, you stand alone among rational people and obstinately deny both sensory evidence and reason.”
The deniers said to them: “You have either affirmed what entails corporealism, anthropomorphism, and the views of the Hashwiyyah, or denied that entailment, thereby contradicting clear reason and self-evident necessity. This is why the most discerning among you have concluded that you actually agree with us in denying that Allah Most High can be seen, but outwardly affirm it because it is the well-known position of the ‘Hashwiyyah,’ who are known as the people of the Sunnah and the community, so that you may be counted among them. Alternatively, you have affirmed it in contradiction to your own principles. Thus, you waver between self-contradiction and dissimulation.”
If a person agrees with those who deny the attributes but affirms Allah’s most beautiful names—as the Mu‘tazilah do, who are leading authorities in speculative theology—those who deny Allah’s most beautiful names call him an anthropomorphist, a Hashwī, and a corporealist. This is what the Hākimī Bātinī Qarmatians and others have done. They said: “If you say that He is existent, knowing, living, and powerful, this amounts to advocating anthropomorphism, corporealism, and the views of the Hashwiyyah, since it makes Him resemble other, created beings. Moreover, no existent, living, knowing, powerful being can be conceived of except as a body, and these names necessarily entail attributes, while attributes necessarily entail corporealism.”