On Clarifying Their Position Concerning the Divine Attributes

6 – The creed of the Salaf—may Allah have mercy on them—is to believe in the attributes and names of Allah, exalted is He, with which He described Himself in His verses and revelation or upon the tongue of His Messenger, without adding to them or subtracting from them, without overstepping them, and without explaining or interpreting them in a way that contradicts their outward sense; without likening them to the attributes of created beings or the qualities of the contingent. Rather, they accept them exactly as they have come, consigning the knowledge of their reality to the One who uttered them and their meaning to the One who spoke them.

7 – Some of them said—and this is narrated from al-Shafiʿi, may Allah have mercy on him—“I believe in whatever has come from Allah according to what Allah intended, and in whatever has come from the Messenger of Allah according to what the Messenger of Allah ﷺ intended.”

8 – They knew that the One who spoke these words is utterly truthful, without the slightest doubt; so they affirmed them. Yet they did not know the exact reality of their meanings, and therefore remained silent about what they did not know. The later generations adopted this stance from the earlier ones, each advising the other to follow well, to stop where the first had stopped, warning against exceeding their limits or departing from their path, and clarifying for people their way and their doctrine. We ask Allah, exalted is He, to make us among those who emulate them: explaining what they explained and treading the path they trod.

9 – The evidence that their doctrine is as we have described is that they transmitted to us the magnificent Qur’an and the reports of the Messenger ﷺ with a transmission that affirmed them, believed in them, and accepted them—free of hesitation or doubt.