is His message, and rejecting the reality of what the messengers proclaimed and their nations knew, deviating from the truth concerning Allah’s names and signs, and likening Him to what is nonexistent and lifeless. For life, knowledge, power, speech, and the like are attributes of perfection, and the Lord Most High is more entitled to every perfection. It is therefore impossible for a created being to possess any perfection without the Creator being more entitled to it, just as it is impossible for a created being to be free of any deficiency without the Creator being more entitled to freedom from it. How could it be otherwise, when He creates perfection in those endowed with it?

“Furthermore,” anything that does not possess the attributes of perfection—life, knowledge, hearing, sight, power, speech, and so forth—must either be capable of possessing them but lack them, or be incapable of possessing them.

If it is capable of possessing them but lacks them, then, by the agreement of all rational people, it is characterized by attributes of deficiency, such as death, ignorance, blindness, deafness, incapacity, and muteness. For they agree that whatever is capable of either of two opposing attributes must possess one when it lacks the other. If, however, it is said to be incapable of possessing these attributes, then it is more deficient than something capable of possessing them but lacking them. Thus, a living creature that can sometimes hear and sometimes be deaf, sometimes see and sometimes be blind, sometimes speak and sometimes be mute, is more perfect than an inanimate thing incapable of either condition.

Thus, whoever does not ascribe the attributes of perfection to Him must either ascribe these deficiencies to Him or hold that He is more deficient than one characterized by them. This is because the “philosophers”