are not intended, then he has either misrepresented the early generations or deliberately lied. No one could ever cite anything from any member of the early generations indicating—either explicitly or by its apparent meaning—that they believed Allah is not above the Throne, or that Allah does not truly possess hearing, sight, or a hand.

I have seen some who attribute this view to the early generations adopt it themselves. They say that the approach of those who advocate nonliteral interpretation is, in fact, the approach of the early generations—meaning that both groups agreed that these verses and hadiths did not indicate the attributes of Allah, glorified and exalted be He. The early generations, however, refrained from interpreting them nonliterally, whereas later generations considered such interpretation beneficial because of the pressing need for it. They say:

“The difference between the two approaches is that the latter may specify the intended meaning through nonliteral interpretation, whereas the former do not specify it, since another meaning may be intended.”

This unqualified claim is an outright lie about the early generations. This is indisputably so with regard to many attributes, such as Allah Most High being above the Throne. Anyone who carefully considers the transmitted statements of the early generations—not even a tenth of which has been cited here—will know beyond doubt that they explicitly affirmed that Allah is truly above the Throne, and that they never believed otherwise. Many of them made similarly explicit statements concerning numerous attributes.

Allah knows that, after thorough research and reading as much of the statements of the early generations as I could, I have not seen any statement from any of them indicating—whether explicitly, by its apparent meaning, or through contextual indications—the negation of the attributes known through transmitted revelation