3. Imam al-Khattabi said: “The way of the early Muslims concerning the divine attributes is to affirm them, let them stand upon their apparent sense, and to deny any modality (kayfiyyah) or likeness (tashbīh) attaching to them.”

4. Ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said: “The people of the Sunnah are unanimously agreed to acknowledge the attributes mentioned in the Book and the Sunnah and to take them in their real sense, not figuratively. Yet they assign no modality to any of them. As for the Jahmiyyah, the Muʿtazilah, and the Khārijites, they all reject these attributes altogether and refuse to accept any of them in their real sense. They claim that whoever affirms them is an anthropomorphist, but in the eyes of those who do affirm them these sects are in fact denying the very One who is worshipped.”

I say: These are but a handful of the many passages we shall encounter in this book, and they all concur that the salaf understood the verses on the attributes, interpreted them, and identified the meaning intended by them in a manner befitting Him—glorified and exalted is He.

Why, then, do al-Kawthari and those like him among the later scholars refuse to raise their heads to these texts and persist in claiming that the salaf did not understand them, that they merely recited them with their tongues without pondering them or clarifying their meaning?

The answer is that, at best, his situation resembles that of al-Juwayni, who was influenced by his teachers among the dialecticians. Yet because he was sincere in seeking knowledge for Allah’s sake, Allah—majestic is He—guided him to the creed of the salaf concerning istiwāʾ and other matters, just as He says: “And those who strive for Our sake—We shall surely guide them to Our ways” (Qur’an 29:69). Were al-Kawthari and others who impugn the ḥadith masters and the salaf equally sincere?

It is exceedingly difficult to answer that in the affirmative, for we see time and again his intense hostility—in all his marginal remarks—toward the imams of the salaf and of pure monotheism, and his continual accusations of corporealism and anthropomorphism against them, especially against Ibn Taymiyyah, even though Ibn Taymiyyah refuted the corporealists.