and so he says, “My two friends! My two friends!” He then addresses them in this way even when they are not present, as though addressing two people who are present. Thus, according to this interpretation, His words,

“Cast, you two,”

address two whose presence is assumed. This therefore provides no evidence whatsoever.

I said to him:

(The second point: Suppose that “hand” may mean an actual hand, or power or favor, or that mentioning it may serve as an indirect expression for the action. Yet what requires us to depart from its literal meaning?

If you say, “Because a hand is a bodily member, and that is impossible for Allah, glorified is He,” I reply: This and similar arguments establish that He cannot be described as having a hand of the same kind as the hands of created beings. There is no doubt about this. But why could He not have a “Hand” befitting His Essence, to which attributes of perfection belong just as they belong to His Essence?

He said: “Neither reason nor revelation establishes that this is impossible.”

I said: Since this is possible, and it is the word’s literal meaning, why should the word be diverted from that meaning to a figurative one? Whatever evidence the opponent adduces to show that He cannot be described by what the term denotes—provided that the evidence is sound—we concede that the meaning proper to a created being is excluded in His case. The word’s literal and apparent meaning, however, is a “Hand” befitting the Creator, just as knowledge and power befit Him—indeed, just as essence and existence do.

(The third point:

I said to him: Have you come across anything in Allah’s Book, in the Sunnah of Allah’s Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, or reported from any of the imams of the Muslims, stating that the intended meaning of “hand” is other than its apparent meaning, or that its apparent meaning is not intended? Or is there any verse in Allah’s Book that rules out describing Him