do not know their modality, while also knowing that their modality is altogether unlike that of anything found in this world.

Some writers employ the word “interpretation” (taʾwīl) to mean diverting a term from its more obvious sense to a less likely one. This usage, however, occurs only in the jargon of later scholars. In the language of the Companions and their Followers the term is confined to the first two senses mentioned earlier.

For that reason most of them held that one should pause at Allah’s words, “and none knows its interpretation except Allah” (Q 3:7), on the basis that the “interpretation” being spoken of is the knowledge Allah has reserved for Himself—namely, the “how,” which we do not grasp. Imām Mālik expressed the principle succinctly: “Istiwaʾ is known; its ‘how’ is unknowable. Belief in it is obligatory, and asking about it is an innovation.” All of the leading imams voiced the same position as Mālik: they denied that creation can know the modality (kayf) of His attributes or the underlying reason (ḥikmah) for His acts. Accordingly, they never asked “how” with regard to His attributes, nor “why” with regard to His actions; for they understood neither the manner of His attributes nor the rationale behind His deeds.

Many later theologians, by contrast, went so far as to deny that such a modality exists in reality at all, rather than simply denying that human beings know it. The earlier authorities would say, “His essence cannot be captured in words, nor can its ‘how’ even cross the mind. People are forbidden to speculate about the reality of His Essence”—a sentiment echoed by Abū Muḥammad Ibn Abī Zayd.