The first person from whom the doctrine of negation (taʿṭīl) was transmitted within Islam was Jaʿd ibn Dirham, early in the second century AH. Jahm ibn Ṣafwān then adopted this malignant teaching from him and propagated it, and after him its adherents came to be known as the Jahmiyyah. The creed later passed to the Muʿtazilah and the Ashʿarites. Such, therefore, are the chains of transmission for their view: they lead back to the Jews, the Sabians, the polytheists, and the philosophers. Within this programme of negation they differ in degree.
• The Jahmiyyah reject both the divine names and the attributes.
• The Muʿtazilah affirm the names while stripping them of their meanings and deny the attributes.
• The Ashʿarites affirm the names and only seven attributes—knowledge, life, power, will, hearing, sight, and speech—while denying all the others.
Their common pretext for rejecting the attributes is the claim that affirming them would entail anthropomorphism and corporeality, for, they say, nothing that we observe to possess these attributes is other than physical bodies; yet Allah declares, “There is nothing like unto Him.”¹ Hence, in their view, the attributes must be negated and annulled, in order—so they imagine—to exonerate Allah from resemblance; and for that reason they brand anyone who affirms the attributes an anthropomorphist.
Faced with the scriptural texts that establish the attributes, they have taken up two stances:
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To believe in the wording while consigning the meanings—remaining silent about any explanation and leaving it to Allah—yet at the same time denying that the texts signify any attribute. They called this “the way of the predecessors (salaf)” and claimed it is the safest path.
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To divert those texts from their apparent meaning to novel interpretations of their own making. This they call “the way of interpretation (taʾwīl),” name it “the way of the later generations (khalaf),” and assert that it is the more knowledgeable and judicious path.
Our answer to their objection is: There is no doubt that the Qur’an itself has clearly spoken on the subject of resemblance