So He, blessed and exalted, is the Light of the heavens and the earth, as He has said of Himself. He has a Face, a Self, and the other attributes with which He has described Himself. He hears, sees, and speaks. He is the First, with nothing before Him; the Last, who remains without end, with nothing after Him; the Manifest, exalted above everything; and the Hidden, whose knowledge encompasses the innermost realities of His creation. Thus He said:

‘And He has knowledge of all things.’

“He is the Sustainer of all existence, the Ever-Living; neither drowsiness nor sleep overtakes Him.”

He cited “hadiths concerning the divine attributes,” then said:

“These are the attributes of our Lord with which He has described Himself in His Book and with which His Prophet has described Him. None of them imposes limits on Him, likens Him to anything, or assigns Him a measure.

‘There is nothing like Him, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.’

“Eyes have not seen Him so as to define what He is like; rather, hearts have seen Him through the realities of faith.” End of quotation.

The statements of the imams on this subject are far too extensive and numerous for this fatwa to contain even a tenth of them. The same applies to the statements of those who transmit their teachings. An example is what Abū Sulaymān al-Khattābī mentioned in his well-known epistle, Dispensing with Speculative Theology and Its Practitioners. He said:

“As for your question concerning the attributes and what has been reported about them in the Book and the Sunnah, the way of the early generations is to affirm them, accept them according to their apparent meanings, and reject specifying how they are or likening them to anything. Some people have denied them, thereby nullifying what Allah has affirmed. Others among those who affirm them have asserted their reality, but in doing so have fallen into a form of likening them to created things and specifying how they are. The aim is simply to follow the straight path between these two extremes. The religion of Allah Most High stands between those who go to excess in it and those who turn away from it or fall short of it.