Someone may well ask, “Would any rational person act like that?” I reply: it is exactly what every sect that indulges in figurative reinterpretation (taʾwīl) has done—those who deny the real import of the divine names and attributes, from the Muʿtazilah onward, together with the latter-day theologians who followed their lead.
We need not range far afield for illustrations. Two passages from the Noble Qur’an will suffice: one reproduces the previous example almost verbatim, and the other stands at the very heart of this book’s subject.
- The first is the Almighty’s statement, “And your Lord will come, and the angels, rank upon rank” (Q 89:22). Some interpreters rendered it as, “Your Lord’s command will come,” and similar contrivances. In the same fashion they treated His words, “Are they waiting for anything except that Allah should come to them in canopies of cloud, together with the angels, and the matter be decided?” (Q 2:210). One of them even said, “Allah will bring them clouds,” thereby denying the coming that befits Allah Most High. Some people of whim went further still, asserting: “The phrase ‘Are they waiting…’ is a quotation of the Jews; it means that they will not accept your religion unless Allah comes to them in clouds so that they may behold Him openly, for the Jews were anthropomorphists who deemed coming and going possible for Allah!” Al-Kawtharī reproduces this claim from Fakhr al-Rāzī and endorses it in his notes on Al-Asmāʾ waʾl-Ṣifāt, p. 447–448.
Reflect—may Allah guide both you and me—on how they have rejected the explicit affirmation of Allah’s coming in these two verses, even though that coming will occur only on the Day of Resurrection. Al-Ṭabarī, commenting on the verse, “Are they waiting for anything except that the angels should come to them or that your Lord’s command should come?” records (12/245–246) on the words “or that your Lord’s command should come” the statements of Qatādah and Ibn Jurayj that it refers to the Day of Resurrection; similar reports from Ibn Masʿūd and others appear in al-Durr al-Manthūr (1/241). See also Imām Ibn Rāhawayh’s pronouncement confirming this coming in the next section of the book ⦗213⦘.
Thus, by the supposed blessing of their taʾwīl, these interpreters have denied the coming of Allah on the Day of Resurrection that these noble verses establish—although authentic hadiths on the point are yet more numerous and explicit. Worse still, they have attributed the very notion of Allah’s coming to the Jews and claimed that the verse was revealed about them! Such a stance is both misguidance and falsehood. The misguidance is obvious, for it involves distorting the Qur’anic text and thereby casting aspersions upon the imams who