Shaykh al-Islām—may Allah sanctify his soul—was also asked:

“Does a necessary implication of a person’s position count as his own position, or not?”

He replied:

As for the question, “Does a necessary implication of a person’s position count as his own position, or not?” the correct answer is that the [necessary implication] (*) of a person’s position is not itself his position if he does not accept it. If he has rejected and denied it, attributing it to him would be a false allegation against him. Rather, it demonstrates the unsoundness of his position and the inconsistency of his assertions, not that he accepts implications which evidently entail disbelief or impossibility. Such cases are exceedingly numerous: people advance views that entail other views which they are known not to accept, without realizing that these follow from their position.

If a necessary implication of a position were itself counted as the person’s position, this would require declaring everyone who describes Allah’s rising above, or any other attribute, as figurative rather than literal to be a disbeliever. For this position necessarily implies that none of His names or attributes has a literal meaning. Likewise, for anyone who does not affirm a shared meaning between the two names, it would follow that nothing of faith in Allah, knowledge of Him, or acknowledgment of Him would constitute faith. For whatever the heart affirms, an argument analogous to that made about the other can be made about it. The necessary implications of these people’s position entail the position of the extreme heretics who deny the divine attributes, whose disbelief is greater than that of the Jews and Christians.