Part One
The creed of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah in summary
First Issue: The Words Samʿ (سَمْع) and Baṣar (بَصَر) in the Language
Samʿ (سَمْع) is the perceiving of sounds, and baṣar (بَصَر) is the perceiving of what is seen. Every Arab distinguishes them from one another and from knowledge. A blind man knows that the sun has risen and does not see it, and a deaf man knows that he has been called and does not hear it. So the Book, which came down in that Arabic, says of Allah that He is the Hearing, the Seeing, and it says of Him separately that He is the Knowing, and it joins the two in the same verse: “the Hearing, the Knowing”. Words joined by the conjunction of attributes are not one word repeated.
The Name al-Samīʿ (السَّمِيع) and the Name al-Baṣīr (الْبَصِير) each carry an attribute and what follows from it: that He has hearing and sight, and that He hears and sees whatever there is to be heard and seen, the secret and the open, and none of it occupies Him from any other. In the same way He has a knowledge and a life, and they are not like the knowledge and life of a creature.
Part Two
The texts of the Qurʾān and the Sunnah
Second Issue: The Hearing and the Sight in the Book of Allah
The verse that is the rule in all the attributes ends with these two Names.
Allah, the Exalted, said in Sūrat al-Shūrā:
Originator of the heavens and the earth. He has made for you mates from among yourselves, and mates from among the cattle, multiplying you thereby. There is nothing like Him, and He is the Hearing, the Seeing.
Sūrat al-Shūrā, 42:11 Read the verse (opens in a new tab)
He denied likeness and affirmed the hearing and the sight in one verse. So the one who affirms them has not likened, and the one who denies them has no use for the first half of the verse, for there is nothing to deny a likeness of. And a woman came to the Prophet ﷺ to complain of her husband, and Allah heard her from above seven heavens.
He said at the opening of Sūrat al-Mujādilah:
Allah has heard the saying of the one who disputes with you concerning her husband and complains to Allah. And Allah hears your conversation. Indeed, Allah is Hearing, Seeing.
Sūrat al-Mujādilah, 58:1 Read the verse (opens in a new tab)
She was in the room with ʿĀʾishah, and ʿĀʾishah could not hear all that she said. Al-Bukhārī placed her words at the head of the chapter in the Book of Tawḥīd.
Al-Bukhārī said in Kitāb al-Tawḥīd of his Ṣaḥīḥ, in a chapter heading:
The saying of Allah, the Exalted: “And Allah is ever Hearing, Seeing.” And al-Aʿmash said, from Tamīm, from ʿUrwah, from ʿĀʾishah, who said: Praise be to Allah whose hearing encompasses the voices. Allah, the Exalted, sent down upon the Prophet ﷺ: “Allah has heard the saying of the one who disputes with you concerning her husband.”
al-Bukhārī, al-Ṣaḥīḥ (al-Sulṭāniyyah), Kitāb al-Tawḥīd, 9/117
Source, chain and authenticity
Authentic. It is in the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī, and the ummah received the two Ṣaḥīḥs with acceptance; its full chain is given in the Arabic above.
Third Issue: The Hearing and the Sight in the Sunnah of the Messenger ﷺ
The Companions raised their voices on a journey, and he told them what the One they were calling upon is like.
Al-Bukhārī reported in his Ṣaḥīḥ from Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī:
We were with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and when we came over a valley we would say “There is no god but Allah” and “Allah is greatest”, and our voices rose. The Prophet ﷺ said: “O people, be gentle with yourselves, for you are not calling upon one who is deaf or absent. He is with you; He is Hearing, Near. Blessed is His Name and exalted is His majesty.”
al-Bukhārī, al-Ṣaḥīḥ no. 2992 (al-Sulṭāniyyah 4/57)
Source, chain and authenticity
Authentic. It is in the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī, and the ummah received the two Ṣaḥīḥs with acceptance; its full chain is given in the Arabic above.
Read the page in the source edition (opens in a new tab)
The whole page in Arabic
He denied deafness of Him, and deafness is the absence of hearing. Nobody says of a thing that does not hear because it only knows that it is not deaf. Then he showed it with his hand.
Abū Dāwūd reported in his Sunan:
ʿAlī ibn Naṣr and Muḥammad ibn Yūnus al-Nasāʾī narrated to us: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yazīd al-Muqriʾ narrated to us: Ḥarmalah ibn ʿImrān narrated to us: Abū Yūnus Sulaym ibn Jubayr, the freedman of Abū Hurayrah, narrated to me: I heard Abū Hurayrah recite this verse: “Indeed Allah commands you to render trusts to whom they are due”, up to His saying: “Hearing, Seeing.” He said: I saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ place his thumb on his ear and the finger next to it on his eye. Abū Hurayrah said: I saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ recite it and place his two fingers. Ibn Yūnus said: Al-Muqriʾ said: He means that Allah is Hearing, Seeing, meaning that Allah has hearing and sight. Abū Dāwūd said: And this is a refutation of the Jahmiyyah.
Abū Dāwūd, al-Sunan no. 4728 (ed. Muḥyī al-Dīn 4/233)
Source, chain and authenticity
Abū Dāwūd, who wrote the book, gave the verdict in six words of Arabic. Abū Yaʿlā drew out the reason: if the hearing and the sight were knowledge, he would have pointed to the heart, the seat of knowledge. He pointed to the ear and the eye, because these are the seats of hearing and sight among men. This does not make the hearing of Allah like that of a man, and it does not give Him organs like a man’s. It shows what the two Names mean.
Part Three
Principles drawn from the evidence
Fourth Issue: The Rules Concerning the Hearing and the Sight
The first rule. His hearing is of two kinds. One takes in every voice, as ʿĀʾishah said. The other is the hearing of acceptance and of answering, as a Muslim says in every prayer “Allah hears the one who praises Him”, and as Ibrāhīm said “Indeed my Lord is the Hearer of supplication.”
The second rule. His hearing and His sight are attributes of the Essence that never cease. What He hears and sees comes to be as He creates it, and He hears each voice when it is. The one who says that His hearing of the woman was before she spoke has contradicted the verse “Allah has heard the saying of the one who disputes with you.” This is taken up in the chapter on the volitional attributes.
The third rule. The sight is one attribute and the Eyes are another, as the chapter on the Eyes shows. Whoever denies the Eyes because they are organs has no ground on which to keep the sight, for every seeing creature sees by an organ.
The fourth rule. A Muslim who knows that He hears will guard his tongue, and one who knows that He sees will guard his actions and his glance. That is what the Prophet ﷺ answered when he was asked about excellence (iḥsān): that you worship Allah as though you see Him, and if you do not see Him, He sees you.
Part Four
The claims of the opponents and their refutation
The Muʿtazilah and those who followed them: “His hearing and sight are His knowledge”
The claim
Said by the Jahmiyyah and the Muʿtazilah, and by some of the Ashʿarīs and Māturīdīs
Allah has no hearing and no sight other than His knowledge. He is called Hearing and Seeing because He knows what is heard and what is seen. Hearing needs an ear and a nerve, and sight needs a pupil, and these are impossible for Him.
Its origin The Jahmiyyah. Abū Dāwūd called the ḥadīth of the two fingers a refutation of them.
The response
First, the argument from the ear. The Muʿtazilah said that hearing comes from the air reaching the nerve at the ear. Their Ashʿarī opponents answered, as Ibn Ḥajar reports in Fatḥ al-Bārī from al-Bayhaqī, that this is only the way that Allah has made it among living things, and that He hears without that. Then the same men deny the Hand because hands are limbs, and the Throne because what sits on a thing is a body. They answered the Muʿtazilah with the very words that Ahl al-Sunnah use against them.
Secondly, the language. No Arab calls a man who knows what was said “one who hears”. A man told by another what was said behind a wall knows it and has not heard it. The Book distinguishes them: “Indeed I am with you both; I hear and I see”, spoken to Mūsā and Hārūn when they feared Pharaoh. It would be no comfort to tell them that He knows, for they knew that already.
Thirdly, the reasoning from perfection. Ibrāhīm said to his father: “Why do you worship what does not hear and does not see?” If not hearing and not seeing were a fault in a god, then the God of Ibrāhīm hears and sees. If He only knows, then Ibrāhīm’s father could reply that his idol’s defect is that it does not know, and the verse would have said so. Allah said the same of the idols in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf: “Do they have eyes with which they see? Or do they have ears with which they hear?” Abū Maʿmar al-Hudhalī said that whoever claims that Allah does not speak, hear or see is among those who have betrayed the religion of Allah.
Fourthly, the origin. The Christians said this of the Spirit. Augustine writes in his Tractates on John that for the Holy Spirit to hear is for Him to know, and that His knowing is His being. Those who hold that hearing is knowing have not gone further than that Father of the Church.
Sources
- Abū Dāwūd, al-Sunan
- Qurʾān
- al-Bukhārī, al-Ṣaḥīḥ
- al-Bukhārī, al-Ṣaḥīḥ (al-Sulṭāniyyah), Kitāb al-Tawḥīd