our contingency; therefore it is impossible to describe Allah, Exalted is He, with anything akin to them. Likewise, our hands, faces, and the rest of our bodily parts are themselves created bodies, and it is just as impossible to attribute their like to Allah Most High.
None of the People of the Sunnah has ever said that, when we affirm for Allah knowledge, power, hearing, and sight, the apparent sense is not intended and must be explained in terms of our own attributes. By the same token, it is impermissible to say that the apparent sense of “hand” or “face” is not intended, for there is no difference between what in our case is a body and what in our case is an attribute of a body.
Whoever claims that the apparent sense of any of His names or attributes is not intended has erred, for with every name by which Allah is called, the apparent sense that applies to a creature is certainly not what is meant. Such a claim would entail that all His names and attributes are meant in a sense contrary to their apparent meaning—and the corruption of such speech is obvious.
The second point is that these qualities are indeed Allah’s very own attributes, befitting His Majesty. Their relation to His sanctified Essence is like the relation of every attribute to the entity it describes: knowledge is an intrinsic attribute of the One described and possesses its own peculiarities, and the same holds for the Face.
One may not say that He has no need of these attributes, for they are necessary by virtue of His Essence; the God who alone deserves worship—glorified is He—possesses every one of these attributes.
Our concern here is not with those who deny all attributes, but with those who affirm some while rejecting others.
The same reasoning applies to His act: we know that creation is the bringing of beings out of non-existence, even though we do not define how that act occurs, nor is it comparable to our acts, for we act only out of need, whereas Allah is Self-sufficient, Praiseworthy.
The same holds for the Essence itself: it is known in a general way, yet it is unlike created essences, and none knows what it truly is except Him; its modality is beyond comprehension. This is what is conveyed by the unrestricted mention of these attributes, and this is how they must be understood.
Accordingly, the believer knows the rulings and effects of these attributes—that is what is required of him. He knows that Allah is powerful over all things; that He has encompassed all things in His knowledge; that the whole earth will be in His grasp on the Day of Resurrection and the heavens rolled up in His right hand; that the believers will gaze upon the Face of their Creator in Paradise and will delight in that vision with a pleasure before which every other pleasure fades, and the like.
He also knows that he has a Lord, a Creator, and One worthy of worship, while he does not grasp the true reality of any of that. Indeed, the limit of created knowledge is this: they know something from certain aspects but cannot encompass its essence, and their knowledge of their own selves is of the same kind.
I then said to him, “Is it permissible to say that the apparent sense is not intended in this explanation?”
He replied, “That is impossible.”