and so it cannot serve as evidence for him.

If it is said: “Al-Khattābī and others have stated that there is agreement that this hadith is to be interpreted figuratively. Abū Sulaymān al-Khattābī said in his book Shi‘ār al-Dīn (The Emblem of Religion), discussing the degrees of the attributes: ‘Some of those who affirm the attributes went to excess in asserting their reality, reaching a form of likening Allah to His creation and portraying Him in their likeness, just as others went to excess in denying the attributes, reaching a form of nullification and negation. Both positions are mistaken and unsound, and the truth has