beginningless eternity,’ the reply is: ‘That was already present without the effects He brought into being, so those effects could not have been brought about in order to attain it.’ Thus, just as your position entails that effects come into being without a cause that Allah Most High brings about, it also entails that He produces them without a wise purpose that He loves and is pleased with.”

They say: “Your position therefore entails denying His will concurrent with the act, His love, and His wise purpose, without which the act cannot occur.”

(The second group say: “The wise purpose relating to Him is realized through His will and power, just as the act occurs through His will and power.” They say: “Even if this inheres in His Essence, it is like all the other attributes and acts of which He has informed us inhering in His Essence.”

The Muʿtazilah deny that attributes and acts inhere in Him. They call attributes “accidents” and acts “temporal events,” and say: “Neither accidents nor temporal events inhere in Him.” Those who do not understand the true nature of their position therefore imagine that they are declaring Allah Most High free of imperfections, defects, and deficiencies.

There is no doubt that Allah must be declared free of every defect, imperfection, and deficiency. For He is the Most Holy, the Flawless, the Self-Sufficient, the Master who is perfect in every attribute of perfection, with a perfection whose reality creation can comprehend. He is free of every imperfection, and creation cannot comprehend the fullness of this transcendence. Every perfection established for an existent being that entails no imperfection belongs more rightfully to the Creator Most High, who possesses it more perfectly. Every imperfection from which a created being is declared free is something from which the Creator has a greater right to be declared free, and from which He is more fittingly held to be exempt.

We have transmitted through several routes, including those of ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd al-Dārimī, Abū Jaʿfar al-Tabarī, Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī, and others, the explanation narrated by ʿAlī ibn Abī Talhah from Ibn ʿAbbās concerning the words of the Most High, “the Self-Sufficient.” He said: “The Master whose mastery is perfect, and the Noble One who is perfect