What their position really amounts to is: “Existent, yet nonexistent; necessary, yet not necessary.” This is where their position ultimately leads—either conjoining the two contradictories or negating them both.

Hence they end in perplexity and exalt it. In their view, it is the highest degree of knowledge attained by the prophets, the friends of Allah, the imams, and the philosophers.

Among the foundations of their misguidance is their supposition that this amounts to declaring Allah transcendent above all likeness, and that whenever they describe Him with an affirmative or negative attribute, they thereby liken Him to others. They fail to realize that the resemblance denied of Allah consists in attributing to Him anything peculiar to created beings, or in treating any of His attributes as equivalent to the attributes of created beings, such that what is possible with regard to them would be possible with regard to Him, what is necessary for them would be necessary for Him, or what is impossible for them would be impossible for Him, without qualification.

This is the impossible equivalence denied by both reason and revelation. It is therefore impossible to ascribe any deficiency to Him (1), and it is impossible for anything other than Him to equal Him in any attribute of perfection. Together, these two principles encompass everything above which the Exalted Lord must be declared transcendent, as we have explained at length in many places.

Both principles are indicated by His words, Exalted is He:

“Say: He is Allah, the One;
Allah, the Eternal Refuge.
He neither begets nor is born,
and there is none equivalent to Him.”

[Surah al-Ikhlās]

We have already explained this at length in a separate work devoted to interpreting these scriptural proofs (2).

As for sharing the same designation—as with “living” and “living,” “existent” and “existent,” or “knowing” and “knowing”—this is unavoidable. Anyone who denies this necessarily lapses into the sheer denial of the divine attributes; for every