The upshot of this position is to bar hearts, tongues, and limbs from knowing Allah, remembering Him, and worshipping Him. It therefore amounts to denying Allah’s names and attributes and to disbelief through suspending judgment and withholding, rather than through outright negation and rejection.

The root of these people’s error is that the term “likening” is ambiguous. There are no two things without some common aspect in which they agree (1). Yet this shared aspect in which they agree does not exist in external reality, but only in the mind. Nor must the two be identical in that respect; rather, things generally differ in their degree of that [common] aspect (2). Thus, when you say of created beings (3), “This one is living and that one is living; this one is knowing and that one is knowing; this one is powerful and that one is powerful,” it does not follow (4 that the two are identical in life, knowledge, and power, nor does it follow 4) (4) that the life, knowledge, and power of one are the very life, knowledge, and power of the other, or that they share some entity (5) existing outside the mind.

This is how these ignorant people went astray (6) concerning what constitutes the likening that must be denied of Allah, and they made it a pretext for the complete denial of His names and attributes. Such denial is worse than ascribing corporeality to Him. One who likens Allah to creation worships an idol, while one who denies His names and attributes worships nonexistence. One who makes Allah equivalent to creation is visually impaired, while one who denies His names and attributes is blind.

For this reason, Jahm—the leader of these people—and others like him would say, “Allah is not a thing (7),”