except that He is the fourth of them” [al-Mujādilah 58:7]. He is over the Throne, while His knowledge is in every place, and none whose opinion counts has ever dissented from them on this point.

Abu ʿUmar also said: The people of the Sunnah are unanimously agreed on affirming all the attributes mentioned in the Quran and the Sunnah, believing in them, and understanding them according to their real meaning, not figuratively. At the same time, they do not enquire into how any of these attributes are, nor do they restrict them to a specific, circumscribed definition.

As for the innovators—the Jahmiyyah, the entire Muʿtazilah, and the Khārijites—all of them reject these attributes, refuse to accept any of them literally, and claim that whoever affirms them is an anthropomorphist. Yet, in the view of those who do affirm them, such groups are in fact negating the very object of worship. The truth is with those who speak in accordance with what the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Messenger ﷺ have proclaimed, and they are the Imams of the mainstream community.

[Words of Imām al-Bayhaqī]

In his time there was the ḥadith master Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī, who, despite his support for the theologians among the followers of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī,