‘Your Lord is neither within the world nor outside it; He cannot be pointed to; He is not above the world, nor such-and-such, nor such-and-such,’ their hearts would have recoiled from him, and they would have said, ‘This is something unknown.’” They say: “He therefore addressed them in terms of corporeality to establish for them a Lord whom they could worship, even though he knew that attributing corporeality to Allah was false.”

This is said by groups of prominent, well-known jurists of later times who supposed that the position of those who deny the divine attributes was correct, and therefore needed to explain away the Messenger’s affirmation of them—may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Such statements can be found in the writings of more than one of them.

At other times, they say: “The Messenger—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—refrained from explaining the truth only so that they would strive to discover it without his making it known to them, and strive to reinterpret his words, thereby earning greater rewards for doing so.” This refers to their efforts in rational speculation and reinterpretation. They do not say that he intended thereby to instil falsehood in the minds of ordinary people, as those philosophers maintain.

This is the position of most speculative theologians who deny the divine attributes among the Jahmiyyah, the Mu‘tazilah, and those who follow their path—even Ibn ‘Aqīl and others like him. The first view, however, is found in the writings of Abū Hāmid, Ibn Rushd the grandson, and others like them.

It was only to preserve this principle that Abū Hāmid condemned reinterpretation toward the end of his life and composed Iljām al-‘awāmm ‘an ‘ilm al-kalām (Restraining the Common People from Speculative Theology). For he considered that the welfare of the masses could be secured only by leaving the apparent meanings as they stood, even though he himself held the view expressed in his books al-Madnūn bihā: that negation is what is true in reality.