QUESTION: What is the meaning of the statement: Allah is not His attributes, nor is He other than His attributes? ANSWER: This is a statement of Ahlus-Sunnah wal-Jamaa^ah, and it is a great example of why the matters of the creed are in most need of precise expressions. They say Allaah is not His attributes nor is He other than His attributes, and they say, The Attributes of Allaah are not Him nor are they other than Him, like An-Nasafiyy said: وله صفاتٌ أزليةٌ قائمةٌ بذاتِهِ وهي لا هُو ولا غيرُهُ “He has eternal attributes of His self, and they are not Him nor are they other than Him.” It is a correct statement and one may need to think a little to understand it. Memorize it and ponder on it, it helps you understand the correct belief. Since it is important, I will answer your question to my best and try to make it as clear as I can: To say that Allaah is His Attributes is to deny His self, because a self is not an attribute; a self has attributes. And saying He is attributes would also lead to saying that He is power and He is knowledge and He is hearing and He is speech and He is sight and He is will, which would lead to saying that knowledge is sight, and power is speech, and hearing is sight, and speech is life, etc., which is a negation and overturning of reality, so it is invalid. To say that He is other than His Attributes is to confirm the possibility of the self without the attributes. This means: if He is other than His attributes, It would be valid that He would not be alive, and that he would not have power, etc., and that is invalid. So we say that Allaah is a self that has attributes. We cannot say that His Attributes are Him, or that they are other than Him, because in the negation of one of those statements alone is the confirmation of the other. Thus, we negate both statements, because the confirmation of either is impossible. The proof for all of what was mentioned is in the hadiyth of the Prophet ﷺ: كان الله و لم يكن شيء غيره “Allaah was (existing eternally), and there was nothing other than Him” This includes the confirmation of His Attributes and the negation of them being different from Him. Had His Attributes been different from His self, it would be valid for them to separate from Him, like the attributes of the creation. It is valid for the white body to lose its whiteness, and likewise, for the moving body to become still, and in that is a negation of being eternal. So we do not say that Allaah is His Attributes, or that He is other than His Attributes. We say that Allaah is an eternal unchanging Self attributed with eternal unchanging attributes. Say that His attributes are confirmed for Him, not that they are in Him, not that they are parts of Him, not that they are separate from Him, or that they adhere to Him, nor that they are connected to Him or disconnected from Him, or that they resemble Him or that they do not resemble Him. All of that implies that His Attributes are different from Him, which leads to saying that the attributes could exist without the existence of the self, or that the self could exist without the existence of the attributes. What must be said is that they are attributes of His, their existence is with His existence; they are confirmed for Him and specific to Him. He is not them nor other than them.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 02:11:46 +0000
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