—is exalted above all things; this is part of His perfection and the perfection of His attributes. How, then, could such a meaning be dismissed as corrupt and therefore unintended?!
– Another example: His words, “Rather, both His Hands are outstretched; He spends as He wills” (al-Māʾidah 64).
They say: The apparent sense of the verse is that Allah possesses two real hands, and hands are bodily limbs; this is therefore a corrupt meaning and cannot be intended.
We reply: Affirming for Allah two real hands entails no corrupt meaning whatsoever. Allah possesses two true hands befitting His majesty and greatness; with them He gives, takes, and grasps, yet they bear no resemblance to the hands of created beings. This, too, is part of His perfection and the perfection of His attributes.
Allah the Exalted says, “They have not appraised Allah with the appraisal due to Him; on the Day of Resurrection the whole earth will be in His grasp and the heavens will be rolled up in His Right Hand” (al-Zumar 67).
And in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim it is related from Abū Hurayrah that the Prophet ﷺ said: “No one gives charity from lawful earnings—and Allah accepts only what is lawful—except that the Most Merciful takes it with His Right Hand. Even if it is a single date, He nurtures it in the Hand of the Most Merciful until it grows larger than a mountain.”
What corrupt implication can possibly arise from the apparent wording of these texts such that one would claim it is not intended?
*Both kinds of error can converge in a single example, as in the Prophet’s ﷺ statement: “Indeed, the hearts of all the children of Adam lie between two Fingers of the Merciful, like a single heart; He turns it wherever He wills.”
They said, with respect to the first error: The outward sense of the ḥadīth is that the hearts of the children of Adam are between the Fingers of the Merciful, which would necessitate direct contact and physical touch, and that the Fingers of Allah, glorified be He, are inside our chests. This, they claim, is a corrupt notion and therefore cannot be intended.