As for the messengers and those who follow them—above all, Muhammad ﷺ, his noble Companions, and the generations who have followed them with excellence—they describe Allah only as He has described Himself, negate from Him only what He has negated from Himself, and reproach anyone who departs from this method.
ʿAbd al-Razzaq narrated from Maʿmar, from Tāwūs, from his father, from Ibn ʿAbbās, that Ibn ʿAbbās once saw a man tremble when he heard a prophetic report concerning the Divine attributes, showing his disapproval of it. Ibn ʿAbbās said, “What is the matter with these people? They feel softness toward the unequivocal passages yet are ruined by the ambiguous ones!” He was pointing to ordinary attendees of his gathering who, when they heard any text about the attributes—texts that are in fact unequivocal—were seized by fear and shook as though denying them. They are like those about whom Allah said: “As for those in whose hearts is deviance, they pursue that which is ambiguous in it, seeking discord and seeking its interpretation.” 1 They forsake the unequivocal, pursue the ambiguous, believe in part of the Book, and disbelieve in the rest.
The texts on the Divine attributes are unequivocal, not ambiguous. Muslims recite them, study them, understand their meaning, and reject nothing of them.
Wakīʿ said, “We found al-Aʿmash and Sufyān narrating these hadiths—meaning the hadiths on the attributes—and they did not reject them …” End of quote.
It is only the innovators—the Jahmiyyah, the Muʿtazilah, and the Ashʿarīs—who reject these texts. They have trodden the path of the Qurayshite polytheists who denied the Most Merciful and distorted Allah’s names. Allah the Exalted said: “And to Allah belong the Most Beautiful Names; so call upon Him by them, and leave those who distort His names; they will be recompensed for what they used to do.” 2 Thus He affirmed the Most Beautiful Names for Himself and commanded that He be invoked by them. How, then, can He be invoked by names He has not taken for Himself, or by terms whose meanings—according to these people—cannot even be understood? He has threatened those who distort His names by negating them or twisting their meanings away from Him