What is the ruling on interpreting the attributes of Allah by their effects?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner : He is confused because some attributes in the Arabic language do not have a specific meaning, so what should he do?
The Shaykh : Like what?
The questioner : Or anger. May Allah reward you. How does the movement of the body shorten in the singular Arabic?
The Shaykh : You cannot define all psychological meanings or emotional states, nor express them. Love, hatred, and aversion— you cannot define them, meaning you cannot explain them more clearly than their own terms. All emotions: what does "determination" mean? What is its meaning? You do not know. Allah. Determination means determination. Expressing it.
What you are referring to, this expression, everyone you address and say "sadness," I know the meaning of sadness. But what follows after that, the effects of this, are among its effects. For example, revenge is among the effects of anger. There is no doubt that it is among the effects of anger. So when they grieved us, what did we do? We took revenge on them. And if you were to define anger as revenge, you would have contradicted the Qur'an, because Allah made revenge a branch of anger, not a condition of anger. The condition and its answer are different, without a doubt. When they grieved us, that is the condition, and the answer is: we took revenge on them.
But those who interpret it this way are the ones who deny these voluntary attributes of Allah the Mighty and Majestic. They say, "This is impossible, absolutely not." But we say, if you interpret it as taking revenge, then we ask: does one who has not become angry take revenge? Answer: No. Therefore, your interpretation of it by its necessary consequence indicates the existence of the necessitating cause.
So the people of innovation cannot escape from one thing without falling into something worse than it, always. And praise be to Allah who guided us. We ask Allah for steadfastness for us and for them. When a person finds their speech, he knows what Allah has given of blessings. Otherwise, the hearts are in the hand of Allah, who is able to turn the heart of a person away, and they do not know of the truth except falsehood.
The Shaykh : Like what?
The questioner : Or anger. May Allah reward you. How does the movement of the body shorten in the singular Arabic?
The Shaykh : You cannot define all psychological meanings or emotional states, nor express them. Love, hatred, and aversion— you cannot define them, meaning you cannot explain them more clearly than their own terms. All emotions: what does "determination" mean? What is its meaning? You do not know. Allah. Determination means determination. Expressing it.
What you are referring to, this expression, everyone you address and say "sadness," I know the meaning of sadness. But what follows after that, the effects of this, are among its effects. For example, revenge is among the effects of anger. There is no doubt that it is among the effects of anger. So when they grieved us, what did we do? We took revenge on them. And if you were to define anger as revenge, you would have contradicted the Qur'an, because Allah made revenge a branch of anger, not a condition of anger. The condition and its answer are different, without a doubt. When they grieved us, that is the condition, and the answer is: we took revenge on them.
But those who interpret it this way are the ones who deny these voluntary attributes of Allah the Mighty and Majestic. They say, "This is impossible, absolutely not." But we say, if you interpret it as taking revenge, then we ask: does one who has not become angry take revenge? Answer: No. Therefore, your interpretation of it by its necessary consequence indicates the existence of the necessitating cause.
So the people of innovation cannot escape from one thing without falling into something worse than it, always. And praise be to Allah who guided us. We ask Allah for steadfastness for us and for them. When a person finds their speech, he knows what Allah has given of blessings. Otherwise, the hearts are in the hand of Allah, who is able to turn the heart of a person away, and they do not know of the truth except falsehood.
Source
قناة «فضيلة الشيخ محمد بن صالح العثيمين»، 4280 - 4600 ماذا نفعل في الصفات التي ليس لها معنى محدد في لغة العرب مثل الغضب والمحبة...؟ ابن عثيمين — youtube.com
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.