Giving an example that clarifies this noble condition, which is understanding the Book and the Sunnah according to the understanding of the Salaf of the Ummah.

The Shaykh : I usually give a simple example to clarify the importance of this condition that we derived from the previous verse and the first hadith: ; I give a simple example, a verse in the Noble Qur'an, one of the clearest verses in explaining the divine intent, which is His saying—Blessed and Exalted is He—describing the people of Paradise in Paradise: . What was the position of the Mu'tazilah and the Khawarij regarding this verse, which is explicit that among the blessings of Allah—Blessed and Exalted is He—upon the believers in Paradise, indeed it is the greatest blessing by which Allah bestows upon the people of Paradise, is that they see their Lord on the Day of Resurrection? When they see Him—Blessed and Exalted is He—they forget all the pleasure of Paradise. What did the Mu'tazilah and the Khawarij do with this verse? Did they deny it? No, they did not deny it; because if they had denied it, they would have exited the religion just as a hair comes out of dough. But they denied the divine attributes, they distorted its explicit indication. The prince came, the king came; is it permissible for us to understand that the prince's or the king's servant came? No. My brother, he tells you: this is a known matter in the Arabic language; assuming a deleted modifier. And this is a discussion among the scholars who say: assuming a deleted modifier is permissible when there is evidence necessitating it, otherwise the Arabic language would be disabled. I say: Ahmad came, here, what is understood? His son came, Ahmad's father came, his son came. Where did you get this interpretation from, my brother? ... It disables the Arabic language. And here, this is what the Mu'tazilah and others did in interpreting the texts of the Book and the Sunnah.
Yes?

The questioner : They understand the truth!

The Shaykh : They understand the truth, but the truth did not agree with their desires; therefore they tell you there is a necessity for figurative interpretation. What is the necessity? It did not enter his mind. And this means that we do not say they are absolutely not believers, but we say with full boldness that their faith is deficient and weak; because Allah—Mighty and Majestic—says at the beginning of Surat al-Baqarah: ; who are they? , the first attribute of the righteous is . Okay; from the unseen , no more philosophy needed. They use human reason like human strength, can human strength remove the mountain from its place? No, human strength is limited; likewise sight is limited, hearing is limited, likewise what? Reason is completely limited. Everything means man was created weak. So when they hear the verse: , it is sufficient for them. If we say: , it means we restricted Him to a direction, we placed Him above, we placed Him in front, and so on. These are the doubts they derived from what they see around them as created beings, but they forgot that the Creator described Himself with two attributes; one is positive, and the other is negative. The positive is an attribute subsisting in Him, the negative is His transcendence—Blessed and Exalted is He—so He said: .

The questioner : .

The Shaykh, transcendence, that anything that comes to your mind regarding the attributes of Allah—Mighty and Majestic—confuses the matter so that it becomes like our attributes?! You say immediately: . But is it a meaning subsisting in the mind with no reality and no existence? Far from it. Meaning, we can now imagine the Phoenix, the Phoenix is an old Arabic imaginary name, a large bird spoken of by Sindbad the Sailor in the story of One Thousand and One Nights and similar stories, that it is a large bird, its eggs are like domes, see? And it tells a story with novelty and wit, all imagination within imagination. The Phoenix is a name without a body, a name in the mind, a meaning subsisting in the mind, but outside the mind, meaning in reality, it has no reality. Our Lord—Mighty and Majestic—who has all attributes of perfection and is transcended from all attributes of imperfection, is He like a meaning subsisting in our souls and not having a reality subsisting outside this universe, outside this mind? Allah is greater than that!! Rather, He created the heavens and the earth, so He has all attributes of perfection, so He is a real existing essence and has all attributes of perfection. Since the matter is so; what are His attributes—Mighty and Majestic? We have no room in our minds to describe Him from ourselves, but He has relieved us of the burden of operating our minds by describing Himself to us in the Book and in the Sunnah. Among these attributes: that the believers, as one of the jurists among the poets said, if we can say:
"The believers see Him without how, *** and without likening or any example."
So the seeing of Allah—Blessed and Exalted is He—is established in the Hereafter. The Mu'tazilah denied it, the Khawarij denied it. Is it due to the non-existence of texts from the Book and the Sunnah? No, the texts exist, but they distorted them and denied their meanings. So they did not benefit anything from their belief in these texts while denying the realities of their proofs. So it is obligatory for us to believe in the text in wording and meaning. The text is preserved and infallible. How do we know the meaning? Here is the crux of the matter, as they say; by returning to what the righteous Salaf were upon. The Qur'an is interpreted first by the Qur'an, then by the authentic Sunnah, then by the Salafi reports. Do we find among the righteous Salaf an interpretation of this verse: meaning: "Looking toward the pleasure of her Lord"? Absolutely not. Every report coming from the Salaf agrees with the apparent meaning of the verse first, then with the authentic, explicit hadiths indicating that the verse is on its apparent meaning, which every Arab understands, if he has not been afflicted with madness, if he has not been afflicted with a loathsome sectarianism or partisanship.
There is another verse He—Exalted—said: . The interpretation of this verse came in the authentic hadith in Muslim: meaning: Paradise. meaning: Seeing Allah in the Hereafter. They interpreted it with nothing, seeing the blessings and similar to what was mentioned before. This is called denying the divine attributes!