The Elders believe that the zahiri, the apparent meanings of the verses that refer to the hand, sight and hearing of God, is what they really mean. However, this apparent meaning is one that behooves God, the Almighty, and not what behooves created beings. Commenting on this position, Ibn Taymiyyah has explained the meaning of the words, az-zahir, al-hagigah (the real meaning), and al-majaz (the metaphorical meaning), and defended the belief of the Elders regarding God’s hands.
The belief of the ahl al-hadith who are the Elders of the first three centuries, as well as of those who follow their line from among the people of later ages, is that these ahadith should be taken at face value, should be believed and accepted, and should not be interpreted in a way that leads either to their negation (ta `til) or literalization (taky f) amounting to anthropomorphization (tamthil). A number of writers including Al-Khattabi “a have noted that the Elders are agreed that these verses are to be taken on their face (zahir) without saying anything about the nature (kayfiyyah) of the things they assert or anthropomorphizing them. The position one takes on God’s attributes is subject to the position one takes on His essence; the former follows from the latter and is in agreement with it. Since to affirm the essence of God is to affirm an existence and not merely a quality, to affirm His attribute is to affirm some thing existing and not merely a quality. This is why we say that God has a hand and that He has hearing; we never say that hand means power or that hearing means knowing.
Some people claim that the Elders did not believe that the zahir of these verses was meant. This claim is wrong in words as well as meaning, or at least in meaning if not in words. zahir is an ambiguous term,, it may be taken in two different senses. It may be said that in zahir the hand of God is an organ like a human organ, that His anger entails the boiling of His blood for taking revenge, that His being in the heavens is like water being in a pot. In this view of zahir, if any one says that these meanings are not intended, that God’s attributes should not be understood in this way, that verses and ahddith should not be taken on their zahir in this sense, he is right. The Ahl as-Sunnah are one on the point that there is nothing like God in His essence, attributes and acts. In fact, most of the Ahl as-Sunnah whether they belong to our school or not, call infidels those who authropomorphize God (al-mushabbiyyah) or attribute to Him the qualities of a physical body (al-mujassimah) Whoever takes zahir in this sense is wrong. He is even worse, for he is saying that such is the zahir of the verses and the ahadith on divine attributes. He is certainly not correct in attributing this to the Elders.
The zahir of a passage is what comes to the mind of an unbiased person knowing the language of the passage when he reads it. Sometimes this zahir meaning comes to him simply from the passage itself and sometimes from its context. The meanings which have been noted above and which are inadmissible for God never come to the mind of any believer. For him, the hand of God is just like His knowledge, His power or His essence… No one form the Ahl-as-Sunnah has said that when we say that God has knowledge, power, sight and hearing their zahir is not meant, or ever understood these attributes on the pattern of our attributes. Likewise, it cannot be said that the zahir of the hand or face is not meant for there is no reason to differentiate between our body and any attribute of our body.
In the second sense of zahir, the zahir of these attributes is what behooves God. They stand to His sublime essence just as the attributes of any other being stand to its essence. Knowledge is an essential attribute of a being which is knowing and has its own characteristics. The same is the case with the face. We cannot say that God does not need these attributes, for they are necessary and essential to His being. God, Who is the object of worship and obedience must have all these attributes. The same is true of His actions. We know that to create is to produce the universe from non-being, even though we do not say anything about the modality of creation since it is unlike our actions. Our actions are governed by our needs, and God is above all needs; He is Self-sufficient and All-Perfect. His being is known to us in outline, even though His essence is unlike the essence of created beings. What He is in His essence is known to none except Him; no one can form any idea of it. This is what comes to our mind when we speak of God’s attributes, and it is in this sense that they should be understood.
The Believer knows what these attributes mean or imply, and this is what is required of him. He knows that God has power over everything, that He knows everything, that the whole earth will be in His grip on the Day of Judgment, that the heavens will be in His right hand all rolled up, that the Believers will be looking at the face of their Creator in Paradise and will enjoy it more than any other thing they could have, and so on. He also knows that he has a Lord, a Creator and a God, even though he does not know the real nature of any one. In fact, all knowledge that man has is like this, he knows things of this. world only in some of their respects, not in their true nature, even his own self he knows in the same way
When God mentions any one of His attributes, when His Prophet mentions one, or when those from among the Believers who have the correct faith mention one, before one turns away from the apparent meaning of that attribute, which is its real meaning, and interprets it in an esoteric sense opposite to its apparent meaning or in a metaphorical sense contrary to its real sense, one must ascertain the following four things.
First, if the word concerned has been used in a metaphorical sense. Since the Quran and the Sunnah are in Arabic and the Elders expressed themselves in that language, nothing that is found in any of these sources can be taken in a sense that goes against the usage of the Arabs or violates the rules common to all the languages of mankind. It is necessary, therefore, that the word concerned has really been used in the metaphorical sense; otherwise any pretender could interpret any word in any way he likes, even if there is no justification for it in the language.
Second, there must be some justification for leaving the real meaning of the word and taking it in a metaphorical sense. If a word is used on one occasion in its real sense, and on another occasion in a metaphorical sense, you are not justified in taking it in the metaphorical sense without giving any reason for it. This is commonly agreed. Hence, if anyone wants to depart from the real meaning of a word and take it in a metaphorical sense he must cite a reason for doing so.
Third, the reason which is offered must be incontrovertible. Otherwise, if an argument is advanced on the basis of the Quran or the Faith which shows that the real meaning is what is intended, departure from it cannot be justified; and if this argument consists in citing a clear and unequivocal text, departure from it cannot be allowed. But if it is just the apparent meaning of the text, one must offer a reason for preferring the metaphorical meaning.
Fourth, if the Prophet (pbuh) states something and means something other than what his words apparently convey, he must have made it clear that he did not intend the real meaning, but rather he intended the metaphorical meaning, no matter whether he defined it or not. This is particularly necessary in statements which concern faith and knowledge rather than practice He must also have put in some clues that bar his people from taking his words in the apparent sense. However, the clue may be something rational, as we have in the verse, “She was given something out of everything” (27:23); everyone knows that what is meant is that she (the Queen of Sheba) was given something from everything which persons in her position usually have. Similarly, the verse, “He is the Creator of everything” (13:16, 39:62), everyone who hears these words knows that the Creator Himself is not included in “everything”. The clue may also be contextual. There may be something in the Quran and the Sunnah itself which leads one to take the text in a non-apparent sense. The Prophet cannot have left the people to find out for themselves a secret clue which only a few can discover, be it rational or textual, for if he stated something meaningful, repeated it time and again, addressed it to each and every person, intelligent and unintelligent, perceptive and non-perceptive, asked them to understand it or reflect upon its ideas and their implications, and then wanted them not to believe in its apparent meaning (zahir) because of some secret reason which only a few can discover, and then inform that he did not mean the zahir – that would be misleading the people and confusing them, and the Prophet would have failed in his mission of guiding people and expounding the truth One cannot imagine that, particularly when his words tell clearly that he means the apparent rather than the non-apparent meaning, and when the alleged hidden reason for taking the non-apparent meaning is imaginary rather than real
I will take one of the attributes, the hand (yad), as an example and discuss it in detail; you can understand other attributes in the same way. God has said, “The Jews say, `God’s hand is tied up.’ Be their hands tied up, and be they accursed for the (blasphemy) they utter. No, both His hands are widely stretched. He gives and spends as He pleases” (5:677). Addressing Satan, He said, “Iblis! What prevents you from prostrating yourself to one whom I have created with My hands?” (38:175). At other places, He has said, “No just estimate have they made of God such as is due to Him. On the Day of Judgment the whole of the earth will be but His handful, and the heavens will be rolled up in His right hand” (39:67); “Blessed be He in Whose hands rests all the dominion” (67:1); “In Your hand is all good; verily You have power over all things” (3:26); “Do they not see that it is We Who have created for them, among the things which Our hands have fashioned, cattle which are in their possession?” (36:71). In ahadith of the Prophet, too, there are many references to the hand of God.
The burden of all these texts is that God has two hands unique to Him and essential to Him, but behooving His greatness; He created man with His hands but not the angels or Satan; He holds the earth in His grip, and will hold the heavens rolled up in his right hand; His two hands are outstretched; their outstretching means that He is busy giving out from His blessings, for one does such things by stretching one’s hands, and withdraws from them by closing them or putting them in one’s pocket. When we say that the hands of X are outstretched we mean real hands, and that they are engaged in giving out things. God says, “Do not put your hands tied with your neck, nor stretch them too much” (17:29). And people often say, “X is tight-fisted (ja `d al-banan),” and X is open-handed (sabit al-bandn).”…
If the objector says that God does not have hands of the kind creatures have, and that His hands are not organs one strikes with, it is true. But if he says that he does not have hands in any sense not reducible to His seven attributes, he is mistaken. Such a person usually attempts the following things. First, he says that people often use yad in the sense of blessing or gift, just as they refer to a thing by its cause, for example, they refer to rain by the word “sama “‘ (sky), for similar reasons, people say X has given a hand to Y; and Abu Talib said the following couplet when he once lost his nephew Muhammad (pbuh)
My Lord! bring back my horse-rider, Muhammad, Bring him back, and give me a hand.
And `Urwah Ibn Mas`ud2122 said to Abu Bakr213 at the time of Hudaybiyyah, “Had you not given me a hand which I could not return, I would have given you a fitting reply.
Hand is also used for power on the pattern of calling a thing by the name of its agent, for power is generated by the hand. People say “X has his hand in this matter” or that. Ziyad214 is reported to have said to Mu`awiyah’2215 “I control Iraq with one hand and keep the other hand free.” What he meant is that he expends only half his power in ruling Iraq. The same idea is involved in the verse, “In whose hands is the marriage-tie” (2:237), meaning “who has power to make the contract of marriage.”
An action is also sometimes referred to as the hand of a person instead of the person himself. Since most acts are performed by the hand, to refer to them as the hand is to refer them to the person himself. The Quran says, “God has heard the taunt of those who-, say, `Truly God is indigent and we are rich!’ We shall certainly record their words and their act of slaying the prophets in defiance of right, and We shall say, Taste you the penalty of the scorching Fire. This is because of the (unrighteous deeds) which your hands sent on before you” (3:181-2). That is to say, the deeds which you sent on; for the words that one utters is action one does
In reply, I will say that we do not deny these uses that we have in the Arabic in which the Quran was revealed. Those who interpret God’s attributes metaphorically change the meaning of the texts, and commit blasphemy with regard to His names and interpret wrongly His words, “His hands are outstretched” (5:64), and “one whom I have created with My hands” (38:75). They say that hand in these verses means either blessings in this life or the next or it means power. Hand is a symbol for charity; it does not require that there be a real hand there; in fact, it has replaced the word charity in the common language. The phrase, “whom I have created with My hands,” only means “one whom God has created”; it does not at all imply that He has any hands in reality This is the way they interpret these words.
The first thing that I would say in this regard is that hand is used in this verse in the dual (yadayn), and yad in the dual is not used in the sense of favor or power. Arabs do use the singular from in place of the plural; in the Quran we have “Verily man (al-insan) is in loss” (103:2). Similarly they use the plural form in place of the singular; for example, “men (an-nds) said to them: a great army is gathering” (3:173). They also use the plural in place of the dual, for example, “your hearts (qulubukuna) are indeed so inclined” (66:4). But they never use the singular for the dual or the dual for the singular. It is not permissible to say that you have a man (rajul) with you when you actually want to say that you have two men (rajulayn) with you, nor is it permissible to say that you have two men (rajulayn) with you when you actually want to say that you have one man (rajul) with you So the words, “whom I have created with My two hands” cannot be taken to mean, “whom I have created with My power”; power is a single attribute and cannot be referred to with a dual word. Nor can the words be taken to mean favor; God’s favors are innumerable, and as such they cannot be referred toby a dual word.
These words also cannot be taken to mean “whom I have created.” For if that had been the case, the act would have referred to the hand as its subject, for only when something refers to the hand as the subject may it mean referring to the agent himself, as we have in the verse, “because of (the deeds) which your two hands have sent forth” (22:10), or “because of what your hands have sent on” (3:182), or “among the things which Our hands have fashioned” (36:71). But when the act refers to the agent as its subject and hand is mentioned along with the preposition bi, as in the verse, “whom I have created with My hands” (38:75), it only means that the act has been done by means of the hands. That is why it is not allowed for one who has spoken something or walked somewhere to say that he has done (fa `ala) it with-his hands. One can, however, say that this is what his hands have done, for the word fa `ala only means “he did”; so when you do not want to say that you did something with your hands, the addition of the words “with the hands” is unnecessary and meaningless. You will not find any Arab, or non-Arab who knows his language, saying, “I did it with my hands” or “someone did it with his hands” except when he or the other person really wants to say that he has done the act with his hands. It would not be correct to say either that they do not have hands or that even though they have hands the act was not done with their hands.
I hope that after this clarification it will be easy to distinguish between places where a word is used in its real sense and where it is used in a metaphorical sense. It will also be clear that the verses mentioned above cannot be interpreted in a metaphorical sense in the light of the language itself
The second thing that I would say is that sometimes the word yad may mean a real hand and sometimes a blessing or power, and sometimes it may also allude to an action. Having admitted that, I would ask the question: What is the justification for taking yad in the verse under discussion in a non-real sense? If your reason is that yad refers to a part of the body, and therefore cannot be attributed to God, I will say that surely hand and things like it should not be attributed to God if His hand belonged to the genus of the hands creatures have; this is absolutely right. But it does not rule out that God should not have hands that behoove Him or should not have those perfections which He deserves. There is nothing which reason knows of or revelation tells us that may declare it impossible. If this is the case, why should we not take the word in its real sense, and why should we interpret it metaphorically?
The third thing I would like to say to the person who interprets yad in a non-real sense is this: Can you point out any word in the Book of God, in the Sunnah of the Prophet, or in the sayings of any imam of the Muslims, which says that yad should not be taken in its apparent sense (zahir) or that its apparent sense is not intended? Is there any verse in the Book of God that explicitly or implicitly denies attributing hands to God? The most that interpreters of yad on metaphorical lines cite is the verse, “Say: He Allah is one” (112:1), or “There is nothing like Him at all” (42:11), or “Do you know anyone who is worthy of the same name as He” (19:65). But these verses only deny reducing God to an organism (tajsim) or anthropomorphizing Him (tashbih); they do not deny attributing hands to Him which behoove His majesty. There is nothing in the Quran that negates it. I would also ask if there is anything that reason knows of which categorically says that God cannot have any hands whether they behoove Him or not. Is there anything which reason may advance against God’s hands or negate it by implication? Now, if there is nothing in revelation or in reason which rules out attributing a hand to God, the assumption that there is something that goes against it is purely subjective, a mere fancy
On the other hand, I would, fourth, cite arguments clear and categorical that God has hands in reality. One is the verse which says that God honored Adam in that He created Him with His hands, a fact which made the angels prostrate themselves before him and refrain from asserting their superiority over him. If the verse only meant that God created Adam with His power, or that creation was an act of favor from God, or that it simply meant He created Adam, there was no honor in it, for that is also the case with the angels, with Iblis, and with everything else.
One might say that things are ascribed to God to underline their dignity, as when we say “the camel of God” or “the house of God.” I will say that you cannot affirm this dignity unless there is something in that object which is not found in others. If there were nothing distinctive in “the camel of God” and “the house of God” which distinguishes them from other camels or houses, they would not have been ascribed to God. The fact is that they have been really ascribed to God. It has been said that God created Adam with His hands, which only means that He created Adam with His hands whereas he has created others by saying, “Be,” and they came into being, as has been stated in various traditions.
When you say “the government is in his hands” or “his hands have done this or that” you say two things: one, he has hands, and, two, the dominion is his or the action is his. In the case of the latter sentence, often some liberty is taken, but regarding the former it is never said except when the person concerned has hands in reality.
Obviously no one says “the hands of desire” or “the hands of water”. I do admit that the expression “the government is in his hands” may mean that it is in his power. But one never uses that expression except in the case of one who really has hands.
The difference between the verse, “whom I created with My hands” (38:75) and the verse, “out of what Our hands have done” is twofold: One, in the first case God has ascribed the action to Himself and made it clear that He has created it with His hands, whereas in the second He has ascribed the action to His hands. The other difference is that in Arabic one uses the plural from for the dual only when one is sure that it would not create any confusion, for example, the Quran says “As to the thief, male or female, cut off their hands (aydiyyahumd) (5:41), that is, their two hands (yaday humd), or “the hearts (qulub) of you (two) are indeed so inclined” (66:4), that is, the two hearts of you two. In the same way God has said “From what Our hands (aydind) have done (36:71).
As for the h a d i th there are many examples in them, for example, “Those who practice justice shall be with God on platforms of light on the right hand of the Merciful, though both hands of His are right. They are the ones observe justice in their judgments, in the people they rule, and in the affairs they manage.”216 And, “At the time God created the universe, He wrote down with His own hands thus making obligatory on Himself: `My mercy shall dominate over My wrath.” 21′
(2.30) The meaning of the verse, “The Day when a shin shall be laid bare” (68:42)
The Companions of the Prophet have not differed in their interpretation of the verses that speak of God’s attributes. I have read the comments they have made on these verses and I have studied the ahddith218 they have narrated. I have also gone through more than a hundred commentaries on these verses in various books, large and small, but I have not come across up to this time any statement whatsoever by any Companion in which he interprets any verse or hadith speaking of God’s attributes in a way different from what is commonly understood from them. On the contrary, we have innumerable statements in which they confirm the common understanding and underscore the apparent meaning in opposition to what later writers have said regarding them. There are also many things of interest in traditions they have narrated or the words which have come down from them.
I have not found them differing on anything except on a verse like, “the Day when a shin shall be laid bare” (68:42). Ibn `Abbas and some other Companions have been reported to have said that it refers to the hardship to which God will expose people in `ald. On the other hand, Abu Said and some others with him have taken the shin to be one of the attributes of God in view of the hadith which Abu Said has himself reported and which is recorded in the Sahih collections.
From the language of the Quran, however, it does not appear that it is one of the attributes of God, for the verse, “the Day when a shin (saq) will be laid bare) mentions shin as an indefinite noun, and does not ascribe it to God. It does not say, “the shin of God.” Since shin has not been ascribed to God, it cannot be counted as a divine attribute without giving further reason. Hence Ibn Abbas’ interpretation of the shin cannot be taken as a misinterpretation (ta’wil), for (ta’wil) is to understand a verse in a sense different from what it means and what people commonly understand by it.
Many people take a word in a sense it does not mean, and claim that it is the correct interpretation. This is wrong on two grounds that we have discussed time and again.219
Author: Ibn Taymiyyah
Islamic Topic: Allah Attributes
Source: Book: [Fatawa 6:394-5, Fatdwd 6:355-372] / Also mentioned in “Ibn Taymiyyah Expounds on Islam”