through your figurative interpretations of Allah’s attributes and the descriptions of the Hereafter, even mentioning the verse concerning His rising over the Throne, His descent, the bliss of Paradise, Hellfire, and other such matters.

They may therefore be told: The interpretations they claim are the inner meanings of these expressions are evident meanings known to the elite and ordinary people alike—for example, interpreting His rising over the Throne as power or rank. Everyone has a clearer conception of Allah’s power and dominion over created things than of His rising over them. What necessity, then, requires expressing a clear, evident meaning in words whose apparent sense is harder to conceive than that meaning itself? This is clear and decisive for anyone who reflects upon it, although all the other arguments are likewise so.

Then al-Hafīd said: “When, as we have said, something can be known in itself through the three methods, there is no need to represent it through analogies. Its apparent meaning is retained, admitting no figurative interpretation. If an apparent meaning of this kind concerns the fundamental principles, whoever interprets it figuratively is an unbeliever—for example, someone who believes that there is no happiness or misery in the Hereafter, and that the sole purpose of such statements is for people to be safe