Why do the Asha'irah and the Maturidiyyah deny the exaltation of Allah - Blessed and Exalted is He - ?

The questioner : The issue of exaltation. My question is: what does this issue of exaltation contradict? Why do they want it to be said that the Lord of the Worlds is...

The Shaykh : The same. The fundamental problem in the figurative interpretation of all the verses of the attributes and the hadiths of the attributes is likening Allah to creation.

The questioner : Likening Allah to creation, is this the main problem?

The Shaykh : Absolutely; that is, everyone who denies an attribute of Allah, such as the science of theology, I mean divine speech, and the exaltation of Allah above His Throne, is based on likening Allah to creation. Then they predict that this likening is false ; therefore, what follows from it is false.

The questioner : That is what it means.

The Shaykh : So it is false. So let us proceed to interpret; that is: let us deny the divine attributes. They denied the exaltation of Allah above His Throne; because they likened, as we said first; they said: this means that our Lord is in a place. But it is known with certainty that Allah was and there was nothing with Him, no time and no place; therefore, it is not permissible to say: , Glory be to Allah! Is this our saying, or is it the explicit statement of the Qur'an in many noble verses? Ah, this means such and such. You know, they interpreted istiwaa' as meaning dominion, and the strange thing, very strange indeed.

The questioner : In fact, this interpretation is that...

The Shaykh : Very strange that their example is like the common saying: "We were under the rain, we became under the gutter"!!

The questioner : Exactly; it is the opposite of their doctrine, this interpretation harms them more.

The Shaykh : It harms them more than it benefits them; that is, their thinking was that they interpreted in order to get rid of likening Allah to creation, so they fell into likening Allah to creation with certainty; why? First, this Throne that our Lord rose above is above what the minds can imagine; for it is the greatest of created things, and the Footstool is mentioned in the noble Qur'an as it came in the hadith, it is like a ring thrown in a desert relative to what? To the Throne, so the rising of Allah above the Throne, if we understand it by likening Allah to creation, and it is false - that is: like the king rising above his throne - what did it bring about to be said here in likening? Our Lord is greater than everything, and He is vast and knowing as in the noble Qur'an, and His Throne is the greatest creation that the Lord of the Worlds created; so it is not possible for us to imagine that there is any likening at all, but they imagined likening and fell into what they imagined in reality with a very ugly likening when they said: that is: He dominated! Allah is greater!! Dominating implies that for a moment of time, even a moment of time, He was not dominating the Throne, and the strange thing is that they use a verse of poetry as evidence when one of them says:
"Bishr rose above Iraq *** without a sword and without spilled blood"
Bishr rose above Iraq, who was in Iraq before him? Someone else, so he dominated it after him; so if we interpret as meaning dominated, who was dominating before the Lord of the Worlds? Then domination has the meaning of overpowering, who overpowered the Lord of the Worlds so that the Lord of the Worlds... It reminds me of a story in the Gospel, and how ugly it is! That the Lord of the Worlds entered into a wrestling match with our master Ya'qub - peace be upon him -, a wrestling match like how humans wrestle, and Ya'qub did not leave his Lord a way except that he took from him an admission that he would bless him in his children. Who overpowered the Lord of the Worlds so that the Lord of the Worlds won? Here they know that the problem returns to them, do you know what they said? They said: We say: istiwaa' means dominated, but we remove the meaning of overpowering; do you see?

The questioner : ... as they please, I mean.

The Shaykh : For what? To get rid of it, okay; remove the meaning of likening Allah to creation from the saying of the Lord of the Worlds: this is more comfortable for you and safer for you in your religion and your creed, say: He rose in a manner befitting His perfection; since you brought a phrase from yourselves and said it to get rid of the problem you threw yourselves into by removing the meaning of what? Overpowering, when they removed the meaning of overpowering from dominated, it means they also denied the word dominated, so stay with the Qur'anic text supported and corroborated by dozens of texts from the Book and the Sunnah; that means He exalted Himself in a manner befitting His majesty and greatness and perfection, coupled with the verse: .
So the answer is that they imagined likening in themselves, fleeing from likening, they fell into denial of the divine attributes; so safety, as it came in the previously mentioned verse: ; that is, we combine between affirmation, which is: , and transcendence, which is: , affirmation is that we say: transcendence: ; that is: a rising befitting His majesty and perfection.