known to have been expressed in Islam, either in these terms or in substance, until the final years of Umayyad rule, when Jahm ibn Safwān and al-Ja‘d ibn Dirham appeared. It then appeared among the Mu‘tazilah.
It has thus become clear that anyone who says, “A body is something assembled and composite,” and believes that bodies are composed of indivisible atoms has asserted a rational proposition disputed by most rational people. Nor has it been reported that anyone among the early Muslim generations agreed with him. In his technical usage, he has also assigned the word “body” a meaning that it does not convey in the language. He has thus changed the word’s linguistic meaning and asserted a rational proposition over which there is extensive disagreement. Nothing in revelation supports either his claim about the word’s meaning or his rational proposition. Language does not support what he says, nor does revelation. Reason, meanwhile, does not establish what words denote; it establishes only abstract meanings, and the meaning in question is extensively disputed.
We know necessarily that denying of Allah the meaning that must be denied of Him requires neither this newly devised interpretation of the word nor the rational proposition asserted. Indeed, those who make this their principal basis for declaring the Lord transcendent, by denying of Him what the term “body” denotes, cannot declare Him free of any imperfection whatsoever. For if they say, “This is an attribute of bodies,” everything they affirm is likewise an attribute of bodies: His being living, knowing, and powerful, and even His existing and subsisting in Himself. For they do not know of this in the observable world