The Refutation of the Doubt of the Figurative Interpreters Regarding the Attributes of Allah (Mighty and Majestic)

The Shaykh : This doubt is summarized by their view that if we describe Allah (Mighty and Majestic) with what He described Himself with, we have likened Him to His creation, and it is not permissible for us to liken Him to His creation. The refutation of this doubt, briefly and with extreme ease, is to say:
When Allah (Mighty and Majestic) affirmed for Himself hearing and sight, He preceded that with His saying: . So, by the explicit text of this verse, Allah (Mighty and Majestic) purified Himself from being like any of His creation in any of His attributes. . After He purified Himself and denied that any of His creation resembles Him (Blessed and Exalted is He) in any of His attributes, He affirmed for Himself (Blessed and Exalted is He) the attributes of hearing and sight, saying: . So the method of refuting these figurative interpreters is to say to them: If we say that Allah is All-Hearing, we say: nothing is like His hearing. If we say He is All-Seeing, we say: nothing is like His sight. Likewise, when we read: , we say: His coming does not resemble the coming of humans. .
Otherwise, if these figurative interpreters persist in interpreting the verses of attributes, their interpretation leads them to denying the existence of the Essence of Allah. The reason for this is that we say simply to these figurative interpreters: Does Allah exist? No; is His existence real or is it non-existence? Undoubtedly, they will say: He exists. It will be said to them: Is the creation that Allah created, such as humans, animals, trees, and stones, existent or non-existent? We will be forced to say: existent. So here there are two existences: the existence of the Creator of all created things, and the existence of the created things themselves. So, if we say that the created things exist and Allah exists, does that mean we have likened Allah to His creations, or likened the creations of Allah to Him?
The answer is: No; because we will say: Allah has existed since eternity, first without a beginning, and last without an end, and the human is not so. So, when we affirmed for Allah an existence, we affirmed for Him an existence that contradicts the existence of humans. Likewise, when we affirm for Allah hearing, sight, coming, rising above the Throne, descending, and a hand, and so on of the many attributes mentioned in the Book and the Sunnah, we only affirm for Him attributes that do not resemble the attributes of the created things.
In brief: Allah has the attribute of existence, and the created thing has the attribute of existence. So, this affirmation of the two existences does not mean affirming an existence similar to an existence. The existence of Allah befits His eternity and His creativity, and the existence of the human befits his weakness and his incapacity, and the fact that he was non-existent and Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) brought him into existence. So, affirming that there is a distinction between the divine attribute and the attribute of the created things; this distinction is what denies similarity, and it is what makes us believe in the attributes as they came in the Book and the Sunnah without likening to the created things; because Allah says: , and without denial of the attributes (i.e., denial of the attributes); because Allah affirmed for Himself the attributes, among which are: .
How excellent is what Ibn al-Qayyim (may Allah have mercy on him) says on this occasion: "The one who denies the attributes worships non-existence, and the one who ascribes a body to Allah worships an idol." The one who denies the attributes worships non-existence; why? Because he says: Allah says: . He tells you: He did not come! . He says: He does not descend! He rose above the Throne. He did not rise above the Throne! He has a hand, He does not have a hand! This is the denial. Why do you say: He did not rise, and He does not come? In similarity to whom of the created things who comes? Well; All-Hearing and All-Seeing involves similarity; so He is not All-Hearing and not All-Seeing. So, if he says He exists, I also exist; is there similarity? So the solution to this is to say: His existence is not like our existence, His sight is not like our sight, and all the attributes are not like the attributes of the created things. So the figurative interpreter, and at their head the Mu'tazilah, followed by the Asha'irah after them, their affair reaches the point that if they say: We worship Allah, they only worship non-existence; because what are the attributes of this God? We do not know Allah except by what He described Himself with. So when we come to the attributes by which He described Himself, we interpret them, meaning we take them out of their clear meanings on the pretext that if we say: He came, the human comes; if we say: He is All-Hearing, the human is All-Hearing. The scholars of the Salaf said: This is the denial of attributes. Allah also has an Essence, and each of us has an Essence; so we say: Allah (Mighty and Majestic) has no Essence. Their faith in Allah returns to non-existence. Therefore, Ibn al-Qayyim said: "The one who denies the attributes worships non-existence"; because he does not affirm for Allah any attribute; even the attribute of hearing and sight he interpreted to the attribute of knowledge. But he will be forced to interpret knowledge also; because we say: Allah is All-Knowing. Well; and so-and-so is All-Knowing. Allah said in the Noble Qur'an: , . So Allah is All-Knowing and the human is All-Knowing. So we say that Allah is not All-Knowing; why? Because in their claim there is a sharing between the knowing human and the knowing Lord. On their way, they have no answer at all.
As for the way of the Salaf, we say: Allah is All-Knowing with a knowledge that is not like the knowledge of humans. And it is clear that the knowledge of Allah is intrinsic, whereas the knowledge of the human is acquired; meaning the human was ignorant and then learned. As for Allah (Mighty and Majestic), if the expression is correct, in the nature of His Essence (Blessed and Exalted is He), He is All-Knowing, so He did not acquire knowledge after being ignorant as the human does. So, the sharing in the name does not harm; meaning, if we say that Allah is All-Hearing, and we say the human is All-Hearing, this is not likening; because it is a mere sharing in the name. We say, for example: The human exists and the animal exists... We say that when we said the human exists and the animal exists, we either raised the animal to the rank of the human, or lowered the human from the rank Allah placed him in to the rank of the animal. Mere sharing in existence is not so; rather, we say: The existence of the human is commensurate with his humanity, and the existence of the animal is commensurate with its animality. Likewise, it is said: The inanimate object exists in fact; is the existence of the inanimate object like the existence of the silent or speaking animal? The answer is: No. So the scholars call this a verbal sharing; the existence of the animal in the inanimate object, the existence of the human, and the existence of the Creator of all existing things, this is all a verbal sharing, whereas in reality there is no sharing at all. So the existence of the inanimate object is different from the existence of the animal in reality, and the existence of the dumb animal that does not speak is different from the existence of the speaking human in reality, and the existence of this human is different from the existence of the angels, different from the existence of the jinn, and the existence of all these created things is different from the existence of the Necessary Existent (Glorified and Exalted is He).
Likewise, it is said fully about all the attributes that come or are mentioned in the Book and the Sunnah. So Allah comes certainly; because the text is explicit: . But it is not necessary for us to imagine that He comes on two legs, or comes on a car or a tank or a plane, or anything else that is of the nature of the human. Here we say: . So the Salafi school is the combining of purification and affirmation; we affirm and we purify. As for the school of the Mu'tazilah and those influenced by their school, such as the Asha'irah and others, when their minds were too narrow to understand that there is a real existence for Allah (Mighty and Majestic) that contradicts the existence of the created things, they were forced to say: No, He does not come, He does not rise above the Throne, or He did not rise above the Throne, and He does not descend, and He does not have a hand, and He does not speak, until they said!! This is a much greater and much bigger problem. Allah (Mighty and Majestic), all Muslims agree, despite their different schools and inclinations, that He is a reality and not a concept existing in the mind; meaning He has an existence outside the universe, a real existence, and He is not a concept that the human imagines. So every existing thing has attributes, without doubt, otherwise it would be an illusion. So Allah (Mighty and Majestic), His existence is real and eternal.
What are the attributes of this eternal entity? The mind may grasp some of them, but it cannot exhaust all the attributes except through the path of transmission, which consists of the Book and the Sunnah. When we turn to these texts in the Book and the Sunnah that describe this real entity, which is the Necessary Existent—Glorified and Exalted is He—with attributes, our position toward those attributes was to interpret them figuratively and deny their meanings. This left the existence of Allah as a hypothetical existence, not a real one; because we said that real existence has attributes appropriate to it. So when we took every attribute and interpreted it as the opposite of what the text indicates, we were as if we believed in a hypothetical existence with no reality. As we said earlier, and I repeat and say: Allah—Mighty and Majestic—described Himself with many attributes. He says: He comes, He hears, He sees, and so on. If we say: He does not hear, He does not see, no, no, no; the meaning is that we have not described this real existence that is absent from us. We have not described it. And since we have not described it, we have only judged its existence as a mental judgment.