Re: sifat question

Question:

Some Ash'aris like Ibn Khafif attribute a Yad to Allah.  He says in al-Aqida al-Sahiha:

I agree that they did not intend by it the literal meaning in the sense of limb that comes first to mind.

But, if some word is mentioned mudaaf to Allah it is not necessarily an attribute and the reason we know this is because of its meaning. Like the case of Naaqat Allah which we say is not an attribute of Allah.

Now bearing that in mind, I presume one can only Attribute a Yad to Allah, if he knows what Yad means. If one does not know what Yad means, then how could he say it is an attribute of Allah, for Yad Allah could easily be the second type of mudaf, like Kab'at Allah?

Answer:

According to Al-Aamidi, in Abkaar Al-Afkaar, the fact that creating Adam is done with Yad as the Aayah states rules out possibilities of Yad meaning here anything other than an attribute of Allah, and he says that there is no undisputable proof to that it does not simply mean the attribute of power.  He adds that the fact that the word is in dual form doesn't matter since Arabs do use such a word both in singular and dual forms to mean power.

He also gives an answer to those who object to this interpretation and argue that saying that it means power makes the statement applicable to all the other creations and doesn't give Adam any special rank. He says that Adam's rank is signified as special by having this statement referring to him in the Quran, even if it, strictly speaking, holds true for other creations as well.