Accordingly, whoever denies the perfections that the texts ascribe to Allah has transgressed against the Lord Himself. He has coupled the negation of divine attributes with likening Allah to defective or even non-existent entities, and his excessive denial may rise to the point of comparing the Almighty to what is utterly impossible.
He also wrongs the very texts of revelation: he strips them of the attributes of perfection they affirm for Allah and grafts onto them meanings of his own invention that their plain wording does not convey.
Thus, with respect to Allah’s attributes he combines both negation and anthropomorphism, and with respect to the Qur’an and Sunnah he combines distortion and nullification. He becomes one who deviates concerning Allah’s names and His signs, even though Allah has said, “To Allah belong the Most Beautiful Names, so call upon Him by them, and leave those who deviate concerning His names; they will be repaid for what they used to do” (Al-Aʿrāf 7:180), and, “Indeed, those who deviate concerning Our verses are not hidden from Us. Is the one who will be cast into the Fire better, or the one who comes secure on the Day of Resurrection? Do whatever you wish; He is All-Seeing of what you do” (Fussilat 41:40).
An example of this error is the statement that Allah has informed us that He rose over the Throne (istawā ʿalā al-ʿArsh). Someone may imagine that this rising resembles a human being’s mounting of a ship or a beast of burden, and that Allah therefore needs the Throne just as a rider needs his mount. By this corrupt analogy, if the animal stumbles the rider falls, and if the ship is breached the passenger drowns; accordingly, were the Throne to cease, they claim, the Lord would fall. On the strength of such reasoning they deny the reality of the divine rising.
The root of this misconception is the assumption that Allah’s rising over His Throne is like a human’s sitting on an animal or vessel. This assumption is false, for Allah has attributed the rising to His own majestic Self; He did not speak of an unrestricted rising that could apply to creatures, nor of any general rising that embraces them. It must therefore be a unique rising befitting Him—just as all His other attributes are uniquely His.