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Once this is clear, it becomes evident that what the “Messenger” brought is the truth to which reason points, and that those with the strongest claim to the truth are those who follow him most closely and conform most fully to his teachings—“namely, the early generations of the Muslim community and its leading scholars”—who affirmed the attributes indicated by the Book and the Sunnah and declared Allah free of any likeness to created beings.

Life, knowledge, power, hearing, sight, and speech are attributes of perfection whose possibility is self-evident and which involve no imperfection. Whoever possesses these attributes is more perfect than one who does not. Imperfection lies in their absence, not their presence. A being capable of possessing them, such as an animal, is more perfect than one incapable of possessing them, such as an inanimate object.

Those who affirm the attributes say to those who deny them: “If He did not possess these attributes, He would possess their opposites: ignorance, muteness, blindness, and deafness.”

Those who deny the attributes reply: “These attributes stand in the opposition of privation and possession, not that of negation and affirmation. With two opposites related as privation and possession, the absence of one entails the presence of the other only when the subject is capable of either, such as an animal, which must either