created, and is His bounty.

They say: “He is pleased and becomes angry, but pleasure and anger do not subsist in Him; rather, they are created, and are His reward and punishment.” They say: “He is a speaker and speaks, but speech does not subsist in Him; rather, it is created and subsists in something other than Him.” They may also say: “He possesses will and wills.” Then they may say that will is not something existent; or they may say that it consists of created things and the created command. They may also say: “He brought into being a will that subsists in no subject.”

This false foundational principle, established by those who negate the attributes—the outright Jahmiyyah among the Muʿtazilah and others—is precisely the point on which all who affirm the attributes parted ways with them. These include the early generations, the imams, the scholars of jurisprudence, hadith, Sufism, and Quranic exegesis, and the various speculative thinkers who affirm the attributes: the Kullābiyyah and their followers among the Ashʿariyyah and others, as well as the Hishāmiyyah, the Karrāmiyyah, and other groups of speculative thinkers who affirm the attributes. This is also the position of the recognized leading imams of the Muslims and the leading jurists among their followers—the adherents of Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Ahmad, Abū Hanīfah, and others.

Thus, the claim that the term ‘speech’ applies literally to the expression, while that expression is nevertheless created, contradicts the foundational principle distinguishing those who affirm the attributes from those who deny them—unless that to which an attribute relates is given the name of the attribute itself. Thus, what is commanded is called a ‘command’; that through which mercy is shown is called ‘mercy’; a created thing is called ‘creation’; what is decreed is called ‘power’; and what is known is called ‘knowledge’. But the reply to him is: “None of these is the literal meaning when the term is used without qualification.”