until he said:

“This is so well known among ordinary people and scholars alike that it needs no more than to be stated, for it is self-evident knowledge that no one taught them and that no Muslim has disputed with them.”

Abū ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-Barr also said:

“The scholars among the Companions and their successors from whom interpretations have been transmitted unanimously agreed, in explaining His saying:

‘There is no private conversation among three but He is their fourth,’

that He is over the Throne and His knowledge is everywhere. No one whose opinion carries evidentiary weight disagreed with them on this.”

Abū ‘Umar also said:

“Ahl al-Sunnah unanimously agree on acknowledging all the attributes mentioned in the Quran and Sunnah, believing in them, and understanding them in their real, not figurative, sense. However, they do not specify how any of them are, nor do they set a limited definition for any of them.

“As for the people of innovation—the Jahmiyya, all the Mu‘tazila, and the Khawārij—they all deny these attributes and do not understand any of them in their real sense. They claim that whoever affirms them likens Allah to His creation, whereas those who affirm them regard these deniers as denying the One who is worshipped. The truth lies with those who uphold what the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, declare. They are the leading scholars of the Muslim community.”

These are the words of Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr, the leading scholar of the Maghrib.

His contemporary, the hadith master “Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī,” despite his allegiance to the speculative theologians among the followers of Abū al-Hasan al-Ash‘arī and his defence of them, said in his book “The Names and Attributes”:

“Chapter on the reports affirming the two Hands as two attributes—not as bodily limbs—in view of the transmitted report of