the [false] meaning. The terms “parts” and “portions” are ambiguous and potentially misleading, as we shall explain, Allah willing. I know of no Hanbalī who uses such language without clarification. Rather, their books explicitly [reject] that false meaning, while some of them neither affirm nor deny anything in this regard.

There is no doubt that the books available to people attest that all the early Muslims of the first three generations held a position contrary to what he has stated, as did the imams whom people follow and the shaykhs they take as their guides. This was the position of the leading Mālikī, Shāfi‘ī, and Hanafī scholars, the scholars of hadith, and the Sufis. Indeed, even the leading scholars who affirm the divine attributes among the Kullābiyyah