say: 'God mocks them,' 'God ridicules them,' and 'God schemed against them,' even though according to you there is no mocking or ridiculing from God?"

If he says: "No," he denies the Qurʾān and leaves the religion of Islam.

And if he says: "Yes," it is said to him: "Then do we say, from the aspect that you said 'God mocks them' and 'God ridicules them': 'God plays with them' and 'acts absurdly,' while there is no playing or absurdity from God?"

If he says: "Yes," he has described God with what the Muslims have unanimously agreed to negate from Him and to declare mistaken whoever describes Him with it, and he has attributed to Him that which intellectual proof has established the misguidance of the one who attributes it to Him.

And if he says: "I do not say 'God plays with them' nor 'acts absurdly,' but I do say 'He mocks them' and 'ridicules them,'"

it is said: "Then you have differentiated between the meaning of playing and absurdity, and mocking, ridiculing, scheming, and deceiving. From the very aspect that saying this was permissible while saying that was not permissible, their two meanings differed. Thus it is known that each of them has a meaning other than the meaning of the other."

And speech concerning this category has a place other than this; we disliked lengthening the book by exhaustively examining it. In what we have mentioned, there is sufficiency for whoever is granted success in understanding it.

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The discourse concerning the interpretation of the statement of Him, exalted be His praise: ﴿and He extends them﴾

Abū Jaʿfar said: The scholars of interpretation differed regarding the interpretation of His statement: (and He extends them). Some of them said what—

364- Mūsā ibn Hārūn narrated to me, saying: ʿAmr narrated to us, saying: Asbāṭ narrated to us, from al-Suddī in a report he mentioned, from Abū Mālik, and from Abū Ṣāliḥ, from Ibn ʿAbbās—