with the famous reply: “The istiwāʾ (rising over) is known, its ‘how’ is unknown, affirming it is obligatory, and inquiring about its modality is an innovation.” Such a question pertains to something no human being can know or answer.

Likewise, if someone asks, “How does our Lord descend to the lowest heaven?” he is told, “How is He in Himself?” Should he answer, “I do not know how He is,” he will be told, “Nor do we know how His descent is.” For knowledge of the ‘how’ of an attribute depends upon knowledge of the ‘how’ of the One described; it is secondary and follows on from it. How, then, can you demand of me to know the ‘how’ of His hearing, seeing, speaking, rising, or descending while you do not know how His Essence is? If you concede that He has a real, objective existence deserving of the attributes of perfection, unlike anything else, then His hearing, seeing, speaking, descending, and rising are likewise real and He is characterized by attributes of perfection in which the hearing, seeing, speaking, descending, and rising of created beings bear no resemblance to His.

Ibn Taymiyyah also said in his al-Hamawiyyah ⦗99⦘, after summarizing what has preceded:

“The way of the Salaf lies between taʿṭīl (negation) and tamthīl (anthropomorphism). They do not liken Allah’s attributes to the attributes of His creatures, just as they do not liken His Essence to the essence of His creatures; nor do they deny what He has affirmed for Himself and what His Messenger has affirmed for Him, thereby stripping Him of His Most Beautiful Names and Lofty Attributes, distorting the words from their rightful places, or deviating with respect to the Names of Allah and His verses.

Each of the two factions—those who negate and those who anthropomorphize—actually combine both negation and anthropomorphism. The negators, for example, understand from Allah’s Names and attributes only what befits created beings, and then they proceed to deny those very notions. Thus they both anthropomorphize first and negate afterwards, likening the meanings of His Names and attributes to the meanings of the names and attributes of the creation while denying what rightly belongs to Him—glorified be He—of befitting Names and attributes. When someone says, ‘If Allah were above the Throne, He would have to be either larger than the Throne, smaller than it, or equal to it, and all of that is impossible,’ and similar statements, he has conceived of Allah’s being upon the Throne only in the manner that any body is situated upon another body. This purported consequence follows