Semantics of the Narrative Attributes of Divine: A Comparative Study of Ibn Taymiyyah's Literalism and the People of Hadith

The Narrative attributes of divine  (sifat khabari) form a part of religious texts. Muslims hold various perspectives regarding these attributes. Ibn Taymiyyah employed extreme literalism in the semantics of these attributes. According to him, these attributes should be interpreted according to their apparent meaning, avoiding any form of interpretation (ta'wil). However, the nature of these attributes should be left to God. For this reason, he denies any use of metaphor or interpretation in the attributes of divine information and does not consider these attributes as ambiguous (mutashabihat). He claims that the righteous predecessors (salaf salih) and the people of hadith also held this belief. This research, using a descriptive-analytical method, demonstrates that although the people of hadith used a regulated literalism in approaching religious texts, they abandoned extreme literalism when confronting the attributes of divine information and adopted two fundamental approaches: 1) Some of them resorted to delegating (tafwid) the meaning of the attributes to God; 2) Others came to believe in the interpretation of these attributes. Many of them, based on the verse "No one knows its interpretation except Allah," considered the meaning of these attributes as ambiguous (mutashabihat). Also, unlike Ibn Taymiyyah, the people of hadith denied any modality for God's attributes.