The Originator (_Muhdith_) of the world is God Most High, the One, the Eternal, the Decreeing, the Knowing, the Hearing, the Seeing, the Willing. He is not an attribute, nor a body, nor an essence, nor a thing formed, nor a thing bounded, nor a thing numbered, nor a thing divided, nor a thing compounded, nor a thing limited; and He is not described by quiddity (_mahiya_), nor by modality (_kayfiya_), and He does not exist in place or time, and there is nothing that resembles Him and nothing that is outwith His knowledge and power. He has qualities (_sifat_) from all eternity (_azali_) existing in His essence. They are not He nor are they any other than He. They are Knowledge and Power and Life and Strength and Hearing and Seeing and Doing and Creating and Sustaining and Speech (_kalam_). And He, whose Majesty is majestic, speaks with a Word (_kalam_). This Word is a quality from all eternity, not belonging to the genus of letters and sounds, a quality that is incompatible with coming to silence and that has no weakness. God Most High speaks with this Word, commanding and prohibiting and narrating. And the Qur’an is the uncreated Word of God, repeated by our tongues, heard by our ears, written in our copies, preserved in our hearts, yet not simply a transient state (_hal_) in these [_i.e._, the tongues, ears, etc.]. And Creating (_takwin_) is a quality of God Most High from all eternity, and it is the Creating of the world and of every one of its parts at the time of its becoming existent, and this quality of Creating is not the thing created, according to our opinion.* And Willing is a quality of God Most High from all eternity, existing in His essence. And that there is a Vision (_ru’ya_) of God Most High is allowed by reason and certified by tradition (_naql_). A proof on authority has come down with the affirmation that believers have a Vision of God Most High in Paradise and that He is seen, not in a place or in a direction or by facing or the joining of glances or the placing of a distance between him who sees and God Most High. And God Most High is the Creator of all actions of His creatures, whether of unbelief or belief, of obedience or of rebellion; all of them are by the will of God and His sentence and His conclusion and His decreeing. And to His creatures belong actions of choice (_ikhtiyar_),* for which they are rewarded or punished, and the good in these is by the good pleasure of God (_rida_) and the vile in them is not by His good pleasure.* And the ability to do the action (_istita‘a_) goes along with the action and is the essence of the power (_qudra_) by which the action takes place, and this word “ability” means the soundness of the causes and instruments and limbs. And the validity of the imposition of the task (_taklif_) is based upon this ability,* and the creature has not a task imposed upon him that is not in his power.