Thus, anyone studying these sciences must understand the nature of these attributes conceived as free of all qualifications. Assuming that they exist has led various groups astray in matters of reason and revelation. Rather, when scholars speak of the “unqualified” and the “qualified,” they mean unqualified by a particular qualification or qualified by it.

For example, they say that “slave” is unqualified in the verse concerning expiation for an oath, but qualified in the verse concerning killing. That is, it is unqualified by the requirement of faith. Otherwise, the words,

“then freeing a slave,”

already specify that it is one slave, that the slave exists, and that the slave can be freed. Those who affirm something wholly unqualified say that it is characterized by neither unity nor multiplicity, neither existence nor nonexistence, nor anything else. Rather, it is the essence considered simply as itself, as al-Rāzī explains, taking this from Ibn Sīnā and other such philosophers. Elsewhere, we have discussed qualification and its absence, universals and particulars, at length, and have explained their errors in these matters in ways that need not be discussed here.

Our concern here is only “verbal nonqualification”: uttering an expression free of every qualification. This does not occur. No one speaks except through composite, qualified discourse whose parts are interconnected. These connections constitute qualifications that preclude complete freedom from qualification.

It is therefore clear that those who distinguish between literal and figurative usage have no intelligible distinction by which two categories can be differentiated. This division is thus shown to be invalid. Accordingly, every expression found in Allah’s Book and the words of His Messenger is qualified by what clarifies its meaning. None of it, therefore, is figurative; rather, it is all literal. Thus, when many later scholars claimed that the Quran contains figurative language and cited what supported