then it, too, reverts to the intended reality, even though what is sought may not yet exist or be in hand. Whenever the report is a promise or a threat, it returns to the awaited, intended reality, as

It is related that the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—recited the verse, “Say: He is able to send upon you a punishment from above you or from beneath your feet, or to confound you into factions” (Q 6:65), and remarked, “It is certain to occur, but its interpretation has not yet come.”

ʿAbd Allāh said: “Five have already taken place: al-batsha (the violent seizure), al-lizām (the inevitable chastisement), the smoke, the moon, and the Romans.”

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As for counting the Names and Attributes of Allah—or some of them—among the mutashābih (ambiguous passages) whose interpretation none knows except Allah, or believing that these are precisely the mutashābih whose interpretation Allah has reserved for Himself, as each of these two notions is held by certain groups among our own scholars and others: although they are correct in much of what they say and have been spared innovations into which others have fallen, the issue must be addressed from two angles.

First: Whoever claims that these texts are mutashābih and that their meaning cannot be understood—we reply that the evidence for the invalidity of this view is as follows: I do not know of any of the predecessors of the ummah nor of the leading imams—neither Ahmad ibn Ḥanbal nor anyone else—who classed these texts among the mutashābih mentioned in this verse, or who denied that anyone could know their meaning.

They never treated Allah’s Names and Attributes like incomprehensible foreign speech, nor did they say that Allah reveals words whose meaning no one can grasp. Rather, they affirmed that these are words with sound meanings.

Concerning the hadiths on the Attributes they said: “Let them pass as they have come.”