—from Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī.”

“Likewise, our position on every report that has reached us from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ concerning God’s attributes—when it is authentic—such as affirming the two hands, the face, and the two eyes, is to accept it. We hold that He will come on the Day of Resurrection in layers of cloud; that He descends to the lowest heaven, as the ḥadith states; and that He is established over His Throne, until he said:

“We have explained that the creed of the leading imams and of Ahl al-Sunnah is to let these attributes pass as they have come, without asking how, without delimitation, assimilation, or depiction—just as was related from al-Zuhrī and from Mālik concerning istiwāʾ (rising over). Whoever goes beyond this has transgressed, innovated, and strayed.”

Such was the spirit of this imam; and where is his equal in depth of learning, acumen, and insight into creeds and sects? Yet the world is now filled with people who know nothing of the Salaf. All they know is negation—stripping God of His attributes and rejecting them. Deaf, dumb, blind, and tongue-tied, they invoke “reason” while abandoning transmission. We belong to Allah and to Him we shall return.

Judge Abū Bakr passed away in 403 AH in his seventy-third year. He narrated from al-Qaṭīʿī and Ibn Māsī, and his writings spread far and wide.

140- Abū Aḥmad al-Qaṣṣāb (d. c. 400 AH)

315- The scholar Abū Aḥmad al-Kirgī composed a creed that Caliph al-Qādir billāh copied out and summoned the people to embrace at the beginning of the fifth century, toward the end of the lifetime of Imām Abū Ḥāmid al-Isfarāyinī, the leading Shāfiʿī of Baghdad. The caliph ordered that anyone who departed from it—whether Muʿtazilī, Rāfiḍī, or Khārijī—be called to repent. Among its statements are:

“Our Lord—exalted be He—was alone, with nothing alongside Him and no place containing Him. He then created everything by His power and created the Throne, not out of need for it. He rose over it with an istiwāʾ of settling¹ in whatever manner He willed and desired—not a settling of rest such as creatures experience.”¹

I remark: I wish he had omitted the words “an istiwāʾ of settling” and what follows, for they provide no benefit at all, and the Creator is exalted above rest and fatigue. He went on to say: