Likewise, many philosophers have conceived of abstract numbers and abstract realities, which they call Platonic Forms, as well as time abstracted from motion and moving things, and extension abstracted from bodies and their attributes. They then supposed that these existed outside the mind. All these people have confused what exists in the mind with what exists in external reality.

They may turn one thing into two and two things into one. At times, they take things that are multiple and differ in degree in external reality and treat them as one or as identical in kind and degree. At other times, they take living beings, space, and time as they exist outside the mind and turn one thing into two. The adherents of philosophy and the Jahmiyyah have fallen into both errors. They took the Lord’s attributes—His being knowing and powerful—and made one attribute identical to the other, and the attribute identical to the One described by it.

Likewise, those who say that faith is one thing and that it is the same in all human beings have erred both in considering it one and in considering it uniform, just as they have erred in comparable questions concerning “divine oneness,” “the attributes,” “the Quran,” and similar matters. Thus, the error of Jahm and his followers concerning faith was like their error concerning the attributes of the Lord in whom believers believe, and concerning His speech and His attributes. Glory be to Him! Exalted is He far above what the wrongdoers say.

Blackness and whiteness likewise admit greater and lesser intensity. Indeed, attributes generally admit differences of degree in those who possess them. Hence intellect admits differences of degree, as do obligation and prohibition: one obligation may be stronger than another, and one prohibition stronger than another. Likewise, the knowledge present in hearts admits differences of degree