comprises two kinds:

[One of them] (1) is to deny any imperfection in Him. The second is to deny that anything whatsoever resembles Him with respect to the attributes of perfection befitting Him. Thus, affirming His attributes of perfection while denying that anything else resembles Him encompasses this, as this surah indicates.

As for their opponents among the polytheists and Sabians, and those who followed them among the Jahmites, philosophers, Mu‘tazilites, and the like, their method (2) is detailed negation and general affirmation: they negate the attributes of perfection and affirm only what exists in the imagination.

They therefore say: [He is not such-and-such, nor such-and-such. Some of them say] (3): He has no affirmative attribute; rather, there are only negative or relational attributes, or attributes composed of both. This is held by some of the Sabians and philosophers, such as Ibn Sīnā and others like him. Such a person says: He is absolute existence, on condition that all affirmative determinations be negated of Him. Others describe Him as absolute existence with absoluteness stipulated.

Yet in their logic they have established what sound reason already knows: that the absolute with absoluteness stipulated exists only in the mind, not in external reality. Thus, no animal that is absolute with absoluteness stipulated, no human that is absolute with absoluteness stipulated, and no body that is absolute with absoluteness stipulated can be conceived to exist in external reality. The Necessary Existent would therefore turn out to be impossible in external reality. Beyond being a denial of the divine attributes, ignorance, and disbelief, this also combines two contradictories.

Whoever says that He is absolute, on condition that affirmative determinations be negated, posits something even further removed from external existence than the absolute under the condition of (4) absoluteness, for this has restricted it (5) by negating positive realities (6) rather than—