legally accountable or eligible for honour in any respect. Nor is there in this matter any authoritative explicit text from the Quran or sunnah indicating that creatures other than those two are to be gathered. Although the report of Muslim and al-Tirmidhī is authentic, it was not stated as an exegesis of the verse; it may be a figurative expression for perfect justice. I incline to this view, though I do not definitively judge those who hold the former view to be mistaken, since they have, broadly speaking, material that may serve as evidence. And Allah Most High knows best.”

I say: This is what he said—may Allah forgive us and him—and it is most strange coming from him, for it contradicts what we know of him in that same work: namely, his following the sound path in interpreting the verses of the Book according to the methodology of the salaf, without figurative reinterpretation or negation of the divine attributes. What, then, led him here to interpret the hadith contrary to what its apparent meaning indicates, and to construe it as a figurative expression for perfect justice? Is this not a rejection of the hadith, which explicitly states that retribution will be exacted for the hornless sheep from the horned sheep? Yet he says, following the scholars of speculative theology, that it is a figurative expression—that is, no retribution will be exacted for the hornless sheep.

All this would be said if we confined our consideration to the aforementioned narration of Muslim. But when we turn to the other narrations, such as the hadith cited under this heading, the hadith of Abū Dharr, and others, they are decisive in establishing that the retribution mentioned is a literal reality, not a figurative expression. May Allah have mercy on Imam al-Nawawī, for he indicated this in his earlier statement: “Whenever a term of the Sacred Law occurs, and neither reason nor revelation prevents it from being understood according to its apparent meaning, it must be understood according to its apparent meaning.”

I say: By this he indicated a refutation of the aforementioned figurative reinterpretation. Through similar figurative reinterpretations, the philosophers and many scholars of speculative theology, such as the Muʿtazilah and others, denied that the believers will see their Lord on the Day of Resurrection, His being above His Throne, His descent to the lowest heaven every night, and His coming on the Day of Resurrection, exalted is He—along with other verses and hadiths concerning the divine attributes.

In short, the view that animals will be gathered and that retribution will be exacted among them is the correct view, and no other view is permissible. It is therefore no surprise that the majority adopted it, as al-Ālūsī himself mentioned elsewhere in his exegesis (9/281). Al-Shawkānī likewise affirmed it decisively in his exegesis of the verse in Sūrat al-Takwīr, in his work Fatḥ al-Qadīr, where he said (5/377):