Section: Division Two1 – The Negators
They are those who deny, either totally or partially, the very names and attributes with which Allah has named and described Himself. Because of that denial they distort the texts of the Qur’an and the Sunnah; hence, they are text–twisters and attribute–negators.

These people have splintered into four factions.

The first faction: the Ashʿarites, along with those who resemble them among the Maturidis and others.

• Their method: they affirm the divine names and a handful of attributes, but reject the real substance of most of them. Whatever scriptural passages they can dismiss outright, they do; whatever they cannot dismiss, they reinterpret, and they label that distortion “taʾwīl” (figurative interpretation). Thus they ascribe to Allah only seven attributes: life, knowledge, power, will, speech, hearing, and sight—yet even in these they differ from the early generations as to how the attributes are affirmed.

• Their pretext: they imagined that affirming the attributes they deny would necessarily amount to tashbīh, that is, likening Allah to His creation. As for the attributes they do affirm, they claim that reason itself attests to them, for the very act of bringing