except for the names. For Allah has told us that Paradise contains wine, milk, water, silk, gold, silver, and other things, yet we know with certainty that their reality is not identical to what we have here; between the two there is a vast difference despite a degree of resemblance, as in His saying, “and they will be provided with it in resemblance” (2:25). One explanation is that it resembles what is in this world without actually being the same; thus the names of those realities resemble the names of these realities, just as the realities themselves resemble one another in certain respects.

Therefore, when we are addressed with those names we understand them through the common element shared by the two, but those realities possess a quality we cannot perceive in this life, and there is no path for us to grasp it, since we have never encountered it nor anything wholly comparable to it. Those very realities constitute the taʾwīl—that is, the actual fulfillment—of what Allah has promised.

This refutes the Jews, the Christians, the Sabians among the philosophers, and others, for they deny that Paradise will include eating, drinking, clothing, and marriage, rejecting what the Quran affirms. Anyone who has entered Islam yet plays the hypocrite before the believers interprets these descriptions as mere parables intended to convey spiritual bliss—if he is one of the Sabian philosophers who reject bodily resurrection. And if he is among the hypocrites of either community who do accept bodily resurrection, he explains them as referring solely to the delights of Paradise that are spiritual—pleasant sounds and fragrant scents. Thus every misguided person twists the words