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Even more unsound is the approach taken by those who deny the attributes, or some of them, when they seek to declare Him free of things from which He must indeed be declared free, and whose attribution to Him constitutes some of the gravest forms of disbelief. For example, they seek to declare Him free of sorrow, weeping, and the like, and to refute those Jews who say that He wept over the Flood until His eyes became inflamed and the angels visited Him in His illness, as well as those who ascribe divinity to a human being and claim that he is Allah.

Many people argue against these claims by denying corporeality, spatial location, and the like. They say: “If He possessed these deficiencies and afflictions, He would be a body or have spatial location, and that is impossible.” By adopting such an approach, they have allowed these heretics who deny the names and attributes to gain the upper hand over them. This method does not achieve its intended purpose, for several reasons.

First:

Attributing these deficiencies and afflictions to Allah Most High is more evidently invalid, both rationally and religiously, than denying spatial location and corporeality. The latter involves ambiguity, dispute, and obscurity that are absent from the former. That someone who attributes such deficiencies to Him has committed disbelief is necessarily known in the religion of Islam.

A proof serves to make known and clarify what it establishes. It is therefore inadmissible to establish what is more evident and clearer by means of what is less evident, just as this is not done when formulating definitions.