by negating it with respect to Allah, exalted is He, as in His words: “There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing”¹; and His words: “Do you know of anyone equal to Him?”²; and His words: “And there is none comparable to Him”³; and His words: “So do not set up rivals to Allah”⁴; and His words: “Therefore do not invent similitudes for Allah”⁵. Yet, while He negates any likeness between Himself and created beings, He simultaneously affirms for Himself the attributes of perfection, as in His statement, “There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.”⁶ In this noble verse He combines the negation of resemblance with the affirmation of hearing and sight for Himself, proving that affirming the attributes does not entail resemblance, for there is no necessary connection between the two.
Thus, in many verses of the Noble Qur’an we find affirmation of the attributes side by side with the negation of likeness. This is precisely the creed of the righteous predecessors: they affirm the attributes and deny for Him any resemblance or comparison.
Whoever claims that affirming the attributes is unbefitting to Allah because it implies resemblance has been led to that view only by his own misunderstanding. He imagined that affirmation necessarily entails resemblance, and this mistaken notion then drove him to deny what Allah has affirmed for Himself. Such an ignorant person is, in fact, an anthropomorphist first and a negationist second; he commits what is unbefitting to Allah both at the outset and at the conclusion.
Had his heart been purified from the pollution of anthropomorphism, what would have come naturally to his mind is that Allah’s attributes reach the utmost heights of perfection and majesty, severing every imagined link of resemblance between the attributes of the Creator and those of created beings. His heart would then have been broad enough to believe in Allah’s attributes in the manner befitting Him while at the same time declaring Him free of any likeness to the creation. As for one who imagines that Allah’s attributes resemble those of the created, he has not truly known Allah nor given Him His rightful due. It is for this reason that he fell into the pitfall of negation, going so far as to label as an anthropomorphist anyone who, in accordance with the Book and the Sunnah, affirms for Allah the attributes of perfection and absolves Him of every attribute of deficiency.