things, including direction and place; He is utterly independent of all creation. Whoever interprets those two terms in a purely negative, conceptual sense incurs no objection. Even so, one should neither employ the words “direction” and “place” with respect to Him nor affirm them for Him, since they occur nowhere in the Book or the Sunnah. Anyone who attributes them to Allah errs in wording if his purpose is merely to affirm the attribute of exaltedness; and he errs in meaning as well if he means to confine Allah to an actual spatial location or to liken Him to His creatures.

Likewise, it is impermissible to deny their meaning unconditionally unless one first states what is meant by them, for in some usages that meaning conforms to the Qur’an and the Sunnah. We can plainly observe that those who negate the terms only wish thereby to deny Allah’s attribute of exaltedness and to accuse those who affirm it of anthropomorphism. Hence al-Kawthari, in his annotations, is forever harping on this point; indeed, at every opportunity he brands Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah and his pupil Ibn al-Qayyim as anthropomorphists. The author of Furqan al-Qur’an followed him in this, declaring at one spot (p. 61) that Ibn Taymiyyah is the “Shaykh al-Islam of the anthropomorphists.” “Whomever Allah leads astray, none can guide” (Qur’an 7:186).

The innovators and enemies of the Sunnah have long hurled such charges at the people of hadith, ever since disputes arose between them over certain questions of monotheism and the divine attributes. In the biography of Imam Abu Hatim al-Razi—may Allah have mercy on him—you will read his words:

“The hallmark of the people of innovation is to speak ill of the people of hadith;
the hallmark of the Jahmiyyah is that they call the people of the Sunnah ‘anthropomorphists’;
the hallmark of the Qadariyyah, that is, the Mu‘tazilah, is that they call the people of the Sunnah ‘fatalists’;
and the hallmark of the heretics is that they call the people of hadith ‘rabble.’”

Their fabrication against Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah—claiming that, after citing the Prophet’s words, “Allah descends to the lowest heaven…,” he added, “just as I am descending now”—is well known. The falsity of this lie was exposed by my teacher in ijazah, Shaykh Raghib al-Tabbakh, in several issues of the Journal of the Arab Academy in Damascus, and later by our colleague, the eminent scholar Shaykh Muhammad Bahjat al-Bitar, in his book The Biography of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah.