23 The writer said on p. 40: “The correct view is that the early generations, including the Companions and the Successors, used to reinterpret many expressions that were not intended to affirm attributes of Allah Most High. The Quran commentary of Imam and hadith master Ibn Jarīr, a follower of the early generations (d. 310 AH), provides the strongest proof of this. In his commentary, the hadith master Ibn Jarīr al-Tabarī cited and narrated through his chains of transmission our master Ibn ʿAbbās’s interpretation of ‘shin’ in the words of Allah Most High, ‘On the Day when there is laid bare a shin’ 1, as hardship. For the Arabs say, ‘War has bared its shin,’ meaning that it has grown fierce.”
I say: The writer’s claim that the Companions and the Successors engaged in such reinterpretation is a lie against them and an allegation made without knowledge.
Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah said: “What I now say and write—although I did not write it in my earlier responses, but have stated it in many gatherings—is that no disagreement has been reported from the Companions over the interpretation of any of the Quranic verses concerning the divine attributes.
I have examined the explanations of the Quran transmitted from the Companions and the hadiths they narrated. In doing so, I have consulted as many books, large and small, as Allah Most High willed—more than a hundred Quran commentaries. To this very moment, I have not found a report from any Companion interpreting any verse or hadith concerning the divine attributes contrary to its recognized, commonly understood meaning. Rather, their statements affirming and confirming these meanings, and explaining that these are attributes of Allah, contradict the statements of those who reinterpret them and are too numerous for anyone but Allah to count. The accounts transmitted and related from them likewise contain much of this.
To complete this point, I have not found them disagreeing except over such passages as the words of Allah Most High: ‘On the Day when there is laid bare