The Shaykh Al-Albani’s Position on the Issue of Metaphor in the Noble Qur’an and Providing Examples Thereof

The Shaykh : But here is a point that I must address, even if briefly. The scholars of theology and rhetoric have agreed to call the interpretation of this verse metaphor, and they called this specific type "metaphor of omission" meaning the people of the village; the word "people" is omitted here. This is the metaphor of omission. However, labeling this speech as metaphor is a technical term, so it should not be adopted as a rule such that we interpret every phrase we wish to explain literally as a metaphor. No, but if we find ourselves compelled to interpret a certain Arabic phrase because we are unable to interpret it as what is technically called "literal," then at that point we interpret it as what they call metaphor. But we do not make it a rule that whenever we are not pleased with the literal interpretation of an Arabic phrase, we say it is a metaphor. This is where the disagreement lies. In this verse, there is a real, cosmic necessity: the village, with its stones, trees, plants, land, and mountains, does not speak, so it cannot be asked. Here, there is a metaphor of omission, which is "the people of the village," and that completes the verse. All right.
The Shaykh : When Allah the Exalted said , what is the metaphor here such that we would say "He came"? We might say "His mercy," or "His soldiers," or "His angels," or so on. There is no necessity here. But we say the necessity is that it occurred to their minds that the coming of Allah resembles the coming of humans, and likening is false by the explicit text of the previous verse . We say, "A word of truth by which falsehood is sought." It is true that Allah the Exalted is not like anything, so just as there is nothing like His essence, so too there is nothing like any of His attributes. Among His attributes is that He comes, by the explicit text of the Qur’an and the Sunnah, and that He descends. So why did you say "He comes" in a way that involves likening? If you do so, you have fallen into likening, and then you fled from it to denial of the divine attributes. But if you say "He comes in a manner befitting His majesty and greatness, and He descends likewise," then there is no problem in that. So, in their interpretation of verses, or some of the verses of the attributes, and hadiths of the attributes, by way of figurative interpretation, there is no necessity to quote or take comfort from a verse . There is a vast difference between the two.