a shin.’ It is narrated from Ibn ʿAbbās and others that what is meant is hardship—that Allah will lay bare hardship in the Hereafter—and from Abū Saʿīd and others that they counted it among the divine attributes, on account of the hadith narrated by Abū Saʿīd in the two Sahīh collections.
There is no doubt that the apparent wording of the Quran does [not] indicate that this is one of the divine attributes, for He said: ‘On the Day when there is laid bare a shin.’ The word ‘shin’ is indefinite in an affirmative statement. He did not attribute it to Allah, nor did He say ‘His shin.’ Since the word is not made definite by being attributed to Him, it is not apparent that it refers to one of the divine attributes unless there is other evidence. Such an explanation is not reinterpretation. Reinterpretation means diverting a verse from what it denotes, conveys, and is commonly understood to mean. Yet many of these people assign an expression a meaning that it does not signify, then seek to divert it from that meaning, calling this reinterpretation. This is mistaken in two respects, as we have explained more than once.”1
24 The writer said on p. 41: “Imam Ahmad interpreted the words of Allah Most High, ‘And your Lord comes,’ to mean that His reward comes, as is established from him through an authentic chain of transmission. See Ibn Kathīr’s al-Bidāyah wa-l-nihāyah (10/327).”
I say: Whether this reinterpretation cited by the writer is authentically established from Imam Ahmad requires examination and scrutiny. “Rather, what is known in general is that Imam Ahmad and the great imams who are universally held in high regard within the Muslim community did not disagree on anything in this area.”2 Moreover, it contradicts the many statements transmitted from him—may Allah have mercy on him—in which he forbids and rejects reinterpretation. Sufficient for you in this regard is his book, “Refutation of the Heretics and the Jahmiyyah Regarding Their Doubts about the Ambiguous Passages of the Quran and Their Misinterpretation of Them.”