The Shaykh’s explanation of the position of the people of the Sunnah and the three sects: the Mu’tazilah, the Maturidiyyah, and the Asha’irah, regarding the attributes of Allah the Exalted.

The Shaykh : Today, we live amidst old and new sects and numerous parties. Some of the old sects have had their names disappear, but their effects remain. We hardly hear any mention of the Mu’tazili logic and the Mu’tazili school in these days, but it has evolved, sometimes appearing under the names of Islamic sects and Islamic schools that are respected and recognized by the masses of Muslims, and sometimes under modern views that are closely connected to those old Mu’tazili views. As for the first type I mentioned earlier, which appears under names recognized by Muslims, for example, the Asha’irah and the Maturidiyyah. In the Islamic world today, if we exclude the sects known for deviating from the Shari’ah, such as the Shi’ah, the Zaydiyyah, and the Khawarij, and limit our discussion to those who are called or call themselves the people of the Sunnah and the community, then the people of the Sunnah and the community today consist of three schools regarding creed and four schools regarding jurisprudence. The first three schools are the Maturidiyyah, the Asha’irah, and the people of the hadith. These three sects relate only to creed among the people of the Sunnah and the community. As for the four schools, they are known to everyone in jurisprudence: the Hanafi, the Maliki, the Shafi’i, and the Hanbali. If we return to the first three schools, the Maturidiyyah and the Asha’irah, we find in these two schools a great deal of what belongs to the schools, views, and ideas of the Mu’tazilah. Nevertheless, they exist and are disseminated in the Ash’ari school and the Maturidi school. The most important point related to what I am saying is that something from the Mu’tazilah exists in the two mentioned schools, the Maturidi and the Ash’ari. The most important thing that can be mentioned now is a principle and a rule: that an authentic hadith does not establish a creed. This is the view of the Mu’tazilah, but the Asha’irah and the Maturidiyyah adopt this view as a principle and a rule. The second thing is that the Mu’tazilah are known to the people of the Sunnah, rightly, as those who interpret the verses of attributes and the hadiths of attributes. Interpretation (ta’wil) is the brother of denial (ta’til). The intended meaning of denial is negating the thing, negating the reality. So when there is a verse or an authentic Prophetic hadith with a clear, explicit indication, they nullify this indication and come up with a meaning that does not occur to the mind regarding that Qur’anic text or Prophetic hadith. This means that they did not follow the Book and the Sunnah, but we cannot say they did not follow the Book and the Sunnah by denying them, but rather by turning away from them and departing from their explicit indication under the name of interpretation. Therefore, I said that interpretation is the brother of denial. We give a common example. If an Arab man says, “The king has come,” what comes to mind? To the minds of those addressed by his speech, it means the king’s servant has come. He said, “The king has come,” but the listeners do not understand from his speech that he means the king’s servant has come, nor do they understand that the king’s minister has come. So if an Arab man spoke with this Arabic phrase, this Arabic sentence, “The king has come,” and one of the listeners said it means the king’s servant, this person has nullified the speech of this speaker. What do you say if the speech that is nullified is the speech of the Lord, Blessed and Exalted is He? The Mu’tazilah come, and the Maturidiyyah and the Asha’irah follow them in this, and they interpret some of the Qur’anic verses and Prophetic hadiths with this kind of interpretation, which we rightly said is the brother of denial. In the noble verse: “Your Lord has come without likening, as we said earlier. “The king has come” — no, the king did not come. Who came? The king’s servant, the king’s minister. Of course, there is a difference between the servant and the minister. Nevertheless, if it is interpreted as the king’s minister, it is null and invalid. And if it is interpreted as the king’s servant, it is even more null. So their saying in interpreting the statement of our Lord, Mighty and Majestic: “Your Lord has come” means the command of your Lord, or a creation from the creation of your Lord, or, or. As for the Lord, He does not come in body or spirit. And where did this problem come to them? Or where did this denial come to them? From comparing the Creator to the created, from comparing the unseen to the witnessed. They say it is not permissible to describe Allah with movement. We do not describe Allah with movement because He did not describe Himself with that. Neither did He describe Himself with it, nor did His Prophet describe Him with it. But He described Himself as having come, meaning on the Day of Resurrection. So we say He has come, and we do not say “He has come” means He moved. They refuse to believe in the explicit text of the noble Qur’an. Similarly, for example, regarding this meaning, the well-known and famous hadith, which is for us a mass-transmitted hadith due to the multitude of its authentic chains: The people of the Sunnah, truly, and they are the people of the hadith, believe in the previously mentioned verse on its apparent meaning: “Your Lord has come.” Your Lord has come. “Our Lord descends.” Our Lord descends. As for the Mu’tazilah, and the Asha’irah followed them in some of what they followed, no, our Lord does not descend, as they said, He does not come. They also said He does not descend. So what does “Our Lord descends” mean? It means His mercy. This is interpretation. This interpretation is denial. This denial necessitates the denial of legal realities related to the divine attributes. When our Lord, Mighty and Majestic, describes Himself in His Book or on the tongue of His Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), that is only to make His servants know Him, Blessed and Exalted is He, because He is unseen from us and we cannot see Him, except on the Day of Resurrection, if Allah wills. So when we come to the verses of attributes and the hadiths of attributes, and we come to them with meanings other than the apparent, clear meanings from the texts of the Qur’an or the hadiths, that means we have denied these divine attributes. “Your Lord has come” — Your Lord did not come. “Our Lord descends” — Our Lord does not descend — Glory be to Allah. If there were a text that He does not come and does not descend, we would believe it. But the texts are to the contrary. So how do we describe our Lord with what He did not describe Himself with, and purify Him from what He described Himself with? This is denial. And this is what some of the Islamic Sunni schools, such as the Maturidiyyah and the Asha’irah, have fallen into, as we said. For this reason, we said that we call for following the Book and the Sunnah and the methodology of the righteous predecessors, so that we do not fall into such deviations that the Mu’tazilah initiated, and then many of those who claim to belong to the people of the Sunnah and the community followed them in. The people of the Sunnah and the community today, in the custom of the present age, and in al-Azhar al-Sharif and the Islamic universities, and so on, are the people of the hadith, the Maturidiyyah, and the Asha’irah. Well, these are three schools in creed. How can there be three schools in creed, in the unseen matters?