Ashʿarīs, Māturīdīs, Atharīs and Abstract Attributes

Why, then, do some people criticise the Ashʿarī and Māturīdī ideologies? Probably the only reason they criticise them is that either they are ignorant about them — that would seem to be one of the primary reasons; when people are ignorant about something, they will criticise it. A lot of people have just been told by others that the Ashʿarīs and Māturīdīs are like this and that, so they just follow that; they have no idea. A lot of the time, it is actually because they have sectarian ideas, so obviously they are going to complain about the mainstream and the orthodoxy.

A related matter is whether we should only talk about Allah from what He has said about Himself, and not make up our own examples. Absolutely: we should restrict ourselves to describing Allah in the way that He has described Himself. But in order to understand some things — especially the more complex things — it seems fine to give examples that the scholars have used.

Can a person be Atharī and not Māturīdī and Ashʿarī? What is the difference? Atharī is a fairly new term. It depends on what is meant by Atharī. If what is meant by Atharī is the opinion of the Salaf — which basically means that any verse that comes about is left to Allah (swt); any ambiguity is left to Allah — then that is the opinion of the Salaf, and then there is no need to call oneself Atharī or anything else; it does not really matter. If something else is meant by it, that is a whole different issue. A lot of this is clarified later, in shāʾ Allāh, in the section that deals with it. And again, as explained in the previous chapter, one does not have to be Ashʿarī or Māturīdī, as long as one does not have a deviant belief — and that is what is important — as long as one has the core fundamental beliefs.

What, then, is the difference between negating attributes and abstract attributes? The abstract attributes is just another name for al-ṣifāt al-thubūtiyyah, the affirmative attributes. Because the ṣifah is the quality. Take ʿilm: it is an abstract. For example, someone might say: show me hearing; show me seeing. It is an abstract attribute, because it is not something that is a substance which can be put on a plate and shown to somebody. That is why they are called abstract attributes. They are called ṣifāt al-maʿānī; they are maʿnā. It is a maʿnā; it is an abstract attribute.