Refuting the Doubt of Those Who Interpret the Attributes of Allah the Exalted

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 is brief and extremely easy: it is said that when Allah, Mighty and Majestic, affirmed for Himself the attributes of hearing and sight, He preceded that with His statement . Thus, by the explicit text of this verse, Allah, Mighty and Majestic, has purified Himself from being like any of His creation in any of His attributes. There is nothing like Him. 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 . So the method of responding to these people who interpret the attributes is to say to them: if we say that Allah is All-Hearing, we say there is nothing like His hearing; and if we say He is All-Seeing, we say there is nothing like His sight. Likewise, when we read "And your Lord comes," we say His coming does not resemble the coming of humans . Otherwise, if these people who interpret the attributes were to follow through with interpreting the verses of attributes, their interpretation would lead to denying the existence of the Essence of Allah. The reason for this is that we say simply to these people who interpret: Allah exists. Is His existence real, or is it non-existence? Without a doubt, they will say He exists. They will be asked: Is the creation that Allah created, such as humans, animals, trees, and stones, existent or non-existent? We will be forced to say it is existent. So here there are two existences: the existence of the Creator of all created things, and the existence of the created things themselves. Does saying that the created things exist and that Allah exist mean that we have likened Allah to His creations, or likened the creations of Allah to Him? The answer is no, because we will say that Allah has existed from eternity, having no beginning and no end, and the human is not so. So when we affirm existence for Allah, we affirm 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 both existences does not mean affirming an existence that is similar to another existence. The existence of Allah befits His eternity and His being the Creator, and the existence of the human befits his weakness and incapacity, and the fact that he was non-existent until Allah, Blessed and Exalted is He, brought him into existence. So the affirmation is that there is a distinction between the divine attribute and the attributes of the created things. This distinction is what denies likeness, and it is what makes us believe in the attributes as they came in the Book and the Sunnah, without likening them to the created things, because Allah says , and without ta'til, which is denying the attributes, because Allah affirmed for Himself the attributes, among them . And how well Ibn al-Qayyim, may Allah have mercy on him, said on this occasion: "So 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 "Your Lord comes," and he tells you: He did not come! He descends to the heaven in the last part of every night, and he says: He does not descend! He rose above the Throne, and he says: He did not rise above the Throne! He has a hand, and he says: He does not have a hand! This is the denial. Why do you say He did not rise and He does not come? Is there a likeness to those who come among the created things? Well, All-Hearing and All-Seeing, is there a likeness? If so, He is not All-Hearing and not All-Seeing. If He is existent, and if he says He is existent, I am also existent. Is there a likeness? The solution to this is that we say His existence is not like our existence, and His sight is not like our sight, and all the attributes are not like the attributes of the created things. So the one who interprets, and at the head of them are the Mu'tazilah, and then after them come the Asha'irah, their affair reaches the point that if they say "we worship Allah," they are actually worshipping non-existence, because what are the attributes of this deity? We do not know Allah except by what He described Himself with. So if we come to the attributes by which He described Himself and we interpret them, meaning we take them out of their clear meanings, on the pretext that if we say "the human comes," he comes, and if we say "the human is All-Hearing," the human is All-Hearing, the scholars of the Salaf said this is ta'til. Allah also has an Essence, and each of us has an Essence. So if 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, not even the attribute of knowledge, hearing, and sight; he interpreted them to the attribute of knowledge. But he will be forced to interpret knowledge as well, because we say Allah is All-Knowing, and so-and-so is knowledgeable. Allah said in the Noble Qur'an . So Allah is All-Knowing and the human is knowledgeable. Do we then say that Allah is not All-Knowing? Why? Because in their claim, there is a sharing between the knowledgeable human and the All-Knowing Lord. On their way, they have no answer at all. But on 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, while 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. That is, if we say Allah is All-Hearing and we say the human is All-Hearing, this is not likening, because it is merely a sharing in the name. We say, for example, the human is existent and the animal is existent... We say when we said the human is existent and the animal is existent, that we either elevated the animal to the attributes of the human, or we lowered the human from the rank Allah placed him in to the rank of the animal. Merely sharing in existence is not so. Rather, we say the existence of the human befits his humanity, and the existence of the animal befits its animality. Likewise, it is said: the inanimate object is existent, in fact. Is the existence of the inanimate object like the existence of the animal, whether mute or speaking? The answer is no. So the scholars call this a verbal sharing. The existence of the animal in the inanimate object, and the existence of the human, and the existence of the Creator of all existent things, this is all a verbal sharing. As for the reality, there is no sharing in it at all. So the existence of the inanimate object is different from the existence of the animal in reality, and the existence of the mute 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 One Who Must Exist, Glorified and Exalted is He. Likewise, it is said exactly about all the attributes that come or are mentioned in the Book and the Sunnah. So Allah certainly comes, because the text is explicit . But it is not necessary that after we imagine that He comes on two legs, or comes on a car or a tank or a plane, which is of the nature of the human, we say here: There is nothing like Him. 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 comprehend 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 have a hand, and He does not speak. Until they said, and this is a greater and much greater problem, that Allah, Mighty and Majestic, all Muslims agree, despite their differences in schools and inclinations, that He is a reality and not a concept established in the mind. That is, He has an existence outside the universe, a real existence, and He is not a concept that the human imagines. So every existent has attributes without a doubt, otherwise it would be an illusion. So Allah, Mighty and Majestic, is a real and eternal existence. What are the attributes of this eternal existent? The mind may comprehend some of them, but it cannot exhaust all the attributes except by the way of transmission, which is the Book and the Sunnah. So when we come to these texts that came in the Book and the Sunnah describing this real existent, who is the One Who Must Exist, Glorified and Exalted is He, with attributes, our position toward those attributes was to interpret them and deny their meanings. The existence of Allah remained a fictional existence, not a real one, because we said that real existence has attributes suitable for it. So when we came to every attribute and interpreted it to the opposite of what the text indicates, at that time it is as if we believed in a fictional existence that has 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, it means we did not describe this real existence that is absent from us. We did not describe it. And since we did not describe it, we did not rule on its existence except with a mental ruling.