The Ruling on Metaphor in the Speech of Allah
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
May Allah reward you. Honorable Shaykh, I hope you will clarify the truth for me: is there metaphor in the Book and the Sunnah or not?
Answer:
The speech of Allah is literal. Metaphor is a feature of the Arabic language; it is possible in Arabic because it is the speech of humans. As for the speech of Allah (Exalted and Majestic is He), it is all literal and contains no metaphor. This is the correct position. Yes, because if we were to open this door and say that the Qur'an contains metaphor, that would become a metaphor for those who deny the attributes. They would say that the attributes are metaphorical. We say, no; the speech of Allah is all literal, so there is no metaphor in it. And even if metaphor is permissible in the Arabic language, it is not permissible in the Qur'an, because not everything that is permissible in the Arabic language is permissible in the Qur'an. Yes.
May Allah reward you. Honorable Shaykh, I hope you will clarify the truth for me: is there metaphor in the Book and the Sunnah or not?
Answer:
The speech of Allah is literal. Metaphor is a feature of the Arabic language; it is possible in Arabic because it is the speech of humans. As for the speech of Allah (Exalted and Majestic is He), it is all literal and contains no metaphor. This is the correct position. Yes, because if we were to open this door and say that the Qur'an contains metaphor, that would become a metaphor for those who deny the attributes. They would say that the attributes are metaphorical. We say, no; the speech of Allah is all literal, so there is no metaphor in it. And even if metaphor is permissible in the Arabic language, it is not permissible in the Qur'an, because not everything that is permissible in the Arabic language is permissible in the Qur'an. Yes.
Source
القرآن الكريم من حيث الحقيقة والمجاز — alfawzan.live
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.