The Presence of Metaphor in the Qur'an
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner:
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success, regarding the issue of whether there is metaphor in the Qur'an, what is the stronger position on this?
The Shaykh:
There is no metaphor in the Qur'an; the Qur'an is entirely literal and contains no metaphor. As for the speech of the Arabs, it may contain both literal and metaphorical meanings.
The questioner:
Honorable Shaykh.
The Shaykh:
Our Shaykh, Shaykh Muhammad al-Amin al-Shanqiti, has a treatise on this, a treatise stating that there is no metaphor in the Qur'an. This is the position of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, who held that there is no metaphor in the Qur'an, but rather it is all literal, and metaphor exists only in the language of the Arabs. Yes.
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success, regarding the issue of whether there is metaphor in the Qur'an, what is the stronger position on this?
The Shaykh:
There is no metaphor in the Qur'an; the Qur'an is entirely literal and contains no metaphor. As for the speech of the Arabs, it may contain both literal and metaphorical meanings.
The questioner:
Honorable Shaykh.
The Shaykh:
Our Shaykh, Shaykh Muhammad al-Amin al-Shanqiti, has a treatise on this, a treatise stating that there is no metaphor in the Qur'an. This is the position of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, who held that there is no metaphor in the Qur'an, but rather it is all literal, and metaphor exists only in the language of the Arabs. Yes.
Source
شرح العقيدة الواسطية [ صالح الفوزان ] [ 1438هـ ]، الإيمان بأنه قريب مجيب — islamhouse.com (52:55)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.