Section:

Once this is clear, it becomes clear that what the Messenger—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—brought is the truth affirmed by reason, and that those with the strongest claim to the truth are those who follow it most closely and accord with it most fully. They are the early generations of the Muslim community and its leading scholars, who affirmed the attributes established by the Quran and the sunnah while declaring Him free of any likeness to created beings. Life, knowledge, power, hearing, sight, and speech are necessarily possible attributes of perfection involving no deficiency. Whatever possesses these attributes is more perfect than whatever does not, and deficiency lies in their absence, not in their presence.

That which is capable of possessing them, such as an animal, is more perfect than that which is incapable of possessing them, such as an inanimate object.

The “affirmers” say to the “negators”: “If He did not possess these attributes, He would possess their opposites: ignorance, muteness, blindness, and deafness.”

The “negators” reply: “These attributes stand opposed as privation and possession, not as negation and affirmation. In the case of opposites related as privation and possession, the absence of one entails the presence of the other only if the subject is capable of both. An animal, for example, must be either blind or sighted because it is capable of both, unlike an inanimate object, which is described as neither.”