When I quoted the Verse of the Footstool, I believe the emir asked about our saying: “No devil will come near him until morning.” I therefore cited the ḥadīth (1) of Abū Hurayrah concerning the man who used to steal the al-Fiṭr charity, adding that al-Bukhārī included it in his Ṣaḥīḥ (2).

They then took to reiterating the negation of tashbīh (imputing resemblance) and tajsīm (ascribing corporeality), expanding at length on the subject and hinting at what some people attribute to us in this regard. So I replied, “My words (3) ‘without takyīf or tamthīl’—that is, without specifying how and without asserting likeness—exclude every false notion. I deliberately chose (4) these two terms because the Salaf explicitly denied takyīf. Rabiʿah, Mālik, Ibn ʿUyaynah and others—through the well-known dictum that scholars have received with acceptance—said: ‘Istiwaʾ is known, its how is unknown, believing in it is obligatory, and asking about it is an innovation.’

These early authorities (5) were unanimously agreed that the ‘how’ is unknown to us, so I negated it in deference to the Salaf of the ummah; moreover, the revealed texts themselves negate it. Indeed, to interpret the verses concerning the divine attributes would require knowledge of the very reality of the One described and of the reality of His attributes—an interpretation that none but Allah knows. I have set this out in a separate principle where I discussed ‘interpretation (taʾwīl), meaning, and the difference between our knowledge of the import of a statement and our knowledge of its ultimate interpretation.’