the divine attributes does not in any way necessitate likening Him to creation, contrary to what Abū Zahrah and his ilk contend. It is truly astonishing that he tries to refute Shaykh al-Islām’s position—affirming Allah’s attributes in the manner befitting His majesty—merely because al-Ghazālī, al-Māturīdī, and Ibn al-Jawzī disagreed with him. He then prefers their view and says, “For this reason we give precedence to the method of al-Māturīdī, the method of Ibn al-Jawzī, and the method of al-Ghazālī.”
Thus Abū Zahrah turns away from the path of the salaf to the path of those later figures—“People have diverse passions”—but he has bartered truth for falsehood, exchanged what is superior for what is inferior: “What an evil exchange for the wrongdoers.”
- He attributes the doctrine of metaphor (majāz) to the Companions, claiming that they would interpret metaphorically whenever applying the literal sense proved impossible, just as they would interpret literally when it was possible. In so doing he ascribes to them the use of metaphor in explaining Allah’s words and alleges that they abandoned the apparent meaning— as though he wished to charge the Companions with denying the attributes and diverting the texts from their manifest sense. Such a claim against the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, is made without a shred of evidence; it is pure whim and partisanship for falsehood.
This is a step beyond accusing Ibn Taymiyyah: it accuses the very Companions of something from which they are completely innocent, for the concept of majāz was only formulated much later by non-Arab scholars who carry no authority in matters of language or exegesis.
- On page 199 he ascribes to the Shaykh the view that Allah never facilitates a human being to commit evil. He writes: “Thus Ibn Taymiyyah affirms three points—the third of which is that Allah facilitates the doing of good, is pleased with it, and loves it, but He does not facilitate the doing of evil and does not love it; in this he differs from the Muʿtazilah.”