and created; they do not claim that these agents are independent of the Creator or share with Him in creation. As for anyone who denies the Maker, he rejects and denies the Maker’s existence, as in the claim Pharaoh openly professed. Our discussion here, however, concerns those who associate partners with Allah while acknowledging His existence. These polytheists do not dispute the oneness that those theologians have established. Rather, they acknowledge it while remaining polytheists, as established by the Quran, the Sunnah, and scholarly consensus, and as necessarily known from the religion of Islam.

The same applies to the “second type”—their statement that “He has no likeness in His attributes.” No nation has affirmed a being without beginning equal to Him in His essence, whether it claimed that such a being acts jointly with Him or that it does not act at all. Rather, anyone who likens something of His creation to Him does so only in certain respects. Reason establishes that no created being can be His equal, sharing with Him everything that is necessary, possible, or impossible with respect to Him. That would entail affirming two contradictories at once, as discussed earlier.

Reason also establishes that any two self-subsisting beings must have something in common, such as both falling under the concepts of existence, self-subsistence, essence, and the like. Denying this entails total negation. The distinctive properties of lordship must also be affirmed. This has already been discussed.

Then the Jahmiyya, including the Muʿtazila and others, incorporated the denial of the divine attributes into what they called the affirmation of Allah’s oneness. Thus, if someone says that Allah has knowledge or power, that He will be seen in the Hereafter, or that the Quran is Allah’s speech, sent down and uncreated, they say: “He likens Allah to His creation and does not affirm His oneness.”