Shaykh al-Islām—may Allah sanctify his soul—was asked the following.

The questioner said:

We ask the scholars of Islam and its eminent leaders—may Allah reward them generously and grant them an honourable welcome and final abode—to lift the veil of generality and dispel the obscurity surrounding a “premise” upon which all adherents of religions and doctrines agree and upon which they base their views, except those who obstinately dispute the truth and deny Allah’s lordship.

The premise is this:

“This is an attribute of perfection, so it must be affirmed of Allah; and this is an attribute of deficiency, so it must be denied of Him.”

They disagree, however, over how this premise applies to particular attributes and over which attributes belong to each of these two categories.

Thus, Ahl al-Sunnah say: Affirming hearing, sight, life, power, knowledge, speech, and the other “attributes known through revelation”—such as the Face, the two Hands, the two Eyes, anger, and pleasure—as well as the “attributes of action”—such as laughter, descent, and istiwā—is to affirm attributes of perfection; their opposites are attributes of deficiency.