in the one to whom the relation is ascribed. For example, a person climbs towards a roof, which is above him, and then sits on it, so that it is beneath him. The roof is thus described at one time as being above and higher, and at another as being beneath and lower, without any attribute coming to subsist in it or any change occurring in it. Likewise, when a child is born to a man, his brother becomes a paternal uncle, his father a grandfather, his son a brother, and his wife’s brother a maternal uncle. These relations and relational ascriptions apply to them without any change occurring in them.

The second view—held by the Karrāmiyyah, many Hanbalīs, most scholars of hadith, and their followers among the jurists, Sufis, and the general body of Muslims—is that these attributes of action and similar attributes ascribed to Allah constitute a “third category.” Most statements of the early generations and of those who have described their position, even al-Ashʿarī, indicate this view. These attributes are neither created things separate from Him, nor are they on a par with His essence and the pre-eternal, necessary attributes that are not subject to His will, whether in their kinds or their individual instances.

Those holding this view may say that He speaks when He wills and is silent when He wills, and that He has always been One who speaks—meaning that He has always spoken when He wills and been silent when He wills. His speech is from Him; it is not created.

They likewise say that, although He has a pre-eternal will, He wills when He wishes, becomes angry, and abhors.

These scholars, or most of them, affirm the apparent meaning of the scriptural texts, such as His saying:

“Then He rose over the Throne,”

meaning that He rose over it after not having been established over it