Imam Malik on Allah's Attributes: Istiwa and Aqidah
In short
Imam Malik ibn Anas died in 179 AH, and one sentence of his has shaped how Muslims talk about God ever since. Asked how God is established on the Throne, he gave an answer that refused the question without denying the verse. This is the long version: his life and the Madinah that formed him, the istiwa answer and which wording is actually his, the shared instruction of four scholars in four cities, seeing God in the next life, the uncreated Qur'an and the inquisition that followed, his argument against speculative theology, and why every later school wants to claim him. Throughout I've separated what is soundly reported from him from what merely gets attached to his name.
What's on this page
- Why Malik still matters
- Who he was
- The Madinah that formed him
- The famous answer about istiwa
- Which wording is actually his
- Why he was angry
- Pass them on as they came
- Seeing God in the hereafter
- The uncreated Qur'an
- The inquisition he did not live to see
- A report worth handling carefully
- His objection to kalam
- The value of "I don't know"
- Refusing the caliph
- What Malik's method actually is
- From Malik to the four rules
- Why everyone claims him
- Common questions
Why Malik still matters
I'll start with an admission. For a long time I knew exactly one thing about Imam Malik's creed — the line about istiwa that gets quoted in every discussion of the divine attributes. I could repeat it. I had never checked whether the version I was repeating was the one he actually said.
It turns out that question has a genuinely interesting answer, and it changes the meaning of the sentence. More on that shortly.
Malik matters here because of when he lived. He died in 179 AH, before the great theological controversies had hardened into schools. He is not arguing for a position within a later debate — he is showing you what the question looked like to a scholar of Madinah before the debate existed.
That is why every later camp wants to claim him, and why his words have been transmitted in competing forms. It's worth going slowly.
Who he was
| Full name | Malik ibn Anas ibn Malik al-Asbahi |
| Born | Madinah, around 93 AH |
| Died | 179 AH, buried in Jannat al-Baqi |
| Known as | Imam Dar al-Hijrah — the scholar of the city of migration |
| Principal work | Al-Muwatta, among the earliest surviving books in Islam |
| Teachers | Nafi the client of Ibn Umar, Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, Rabi'a ibn Abi Abd al-Rahman, Ja'far al-Sadiq and others |
| Students | Al-Shafi'i among many hundreds; his madhhab still dominates North and West Africa |
The scholar of Madinah
He spent essentially his whole life in the Prophet's city, teaching in the mosque. His method leans heavily on the settled practice of its people.
The Muwatta
A collection of hadith and legal practice arranged by subject. Al-Shafi'i is reported to have called it the soundest book on earth after the Qur'an.
The golden chain
Al-Bukhari regarded the strongest chain of transmission to be Malik, from Nafi, from Ibn Umar, from the Prophet.
Famously cautious
He is reported to have answered a great many questions with "I don't know", and considered that an answer rather than a failure.
That last quality is the key to everything below. The caution is not a personality trait he happened to have. It is his method.
The Madinah that formed him
Something worth holding in mind before any of the theology: Malik was born roughly sixty years after the Prophet ï·º died, in the city where he had lived. He learned from people who had learned from the Companions.
He is reported to have made the pilgrimage only once and never to have left the region. Where other scholars of the era travelled widely collecting narrations, Malik's argument was that the living practice of Madinah — what the descendants of the Companions actually did, continuously, in the Prophet's own city — was itself a form of transmitted evidence.
Why this shapes his creed
A scholar who treats inherited practice as evidence is going to be constitutionally hostile to theological positions arrived at by reasoning alone. His answer on istiwa is not an isolated instinct. It is the same principle applied to God.
The famous answer about istiwa
The Qur'an says that God is established over the Throne.
الرَّØْÙ…َٰÙ†ُ عَÙ„َÙ‰ الْعَرْØ´ِ اسْتَÙˆَÙ‰ٰ
The Most Merciful is established above the Throne. Qur'an 20:5
A man came to Malik and asked the obvious follow-up question: how? How is He established?
The reports describe Malik's reaction before they describe his answer. He was visibly angry. He is said to have sweated, lowered his head, and struck the ground with his stick. Then he gave a four-part reply that has been the reference point ever since.
The istiwa is not unknown
The verse means something. You are not reciting an empty word.
The "how" is not comprehensible
The manner is not available to the intellect.
Belief in it is obligatory
You must accept what the revelation states.
Asking about it is an innovation
The question itself is the error.
And then he told the man: "I do not think you are anything but an innovator" — and had him removed from the gathering.
Which wording is actually his
Here is the detail I had never checked, and it matters more than it looks.
The version most people quote in English is: "The istiwa is known, and the how is unknown" — al-istiwa ma'lum wa'l-kayf majhul. That is the phrasing you'll find on most websites, including a great many that are careful about other things.
Commonly quoted: "The istiwa is known (ma'lum), and the how is unknown (majhul)."
The better-attested wording is the reverse construction: al-istiwa ghayr majhul wa'l-kayf ghayr ma'qul — "the istiwa is not unknown, and the how is not comprehensible." This is the form transmitted by Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (d. 386 AH) in al-Jami, and by al-Bayhaqi in al-Asma wa'l-Sifat from Yahya ibn Yahya al-Tamimi, going back to Malik's own teacher Rabi'a ibn Abi Abd al-Rahman.
Why does the difference matter? Because "the how is unknown" suggests there is a manner, and we simply lack access to it. "The how is not comprehensible" says something stronger: the category of "how" does not get purchase here at all.
The distinction in one line
One version says: there is an answer and you don't have it. The other says: you are asking a question that does not apply. Malik's reaction — anger rather than an apology for ignorance — fits the second much better than the first.
I'd add the honest caveat that both wordings circulate in the classical sources and scholars have defended each. There is also more than one report of the incident, with slightly different phrasing and different questioners, which is normal for something transmitted orally through several routes. But if you want the version with the strongest chain behind it, it is the "not comprehensible" one, and it is worth using.
Why he was angry
The anger puzzled me for a while. The man asked a question. Scholars get questions.
I think the answer is that Malik heard the question as containing a hidden claim. To ask "how is He established?" is to assume that establishment is the kind of thing that has a how — that it works like a body occupying a position. The question smuggles in an anthropomorphism before any answer is given.
He wasn't refusing to share information. He was refusing to accept the frame. That's why the reply is not "I don't know" — a phrase he used freely elsewhere — but "the question is an innovation".
There's a second reason worth naming. Malik lived at the point where speculative theology was arriving in Muslim discourse, and he saw where it went: endless disputes about God's nature conducted by people with no revelation to constrain them. His severity is aimed at a trend, not at one confused visitor.
And a third, quieter one. Malik taught in a mosque, in public, to a mixed audience. An answer to a question about God's modality would have been repeated across the city by nightfall in whatever garbled form the least careful listener retained. Refusing loudly was itself a teaching act.
Pass them on as they came
The istiwa answer is not an isolated moment. It's one instance of a rule Malik applied to every text describing God.
Al-Walid ibn Muslim, who died in 195 AH, reported asking four of the major scholars of the generation — Malik, al-Awza'i, Sufyan al-Thawri and al-Layth ibn Sa'd — about the narrations mentioning God's attributes. He records that all four gave him the same instruction.
The shared answer
Ø£َÙ…ِرُّوهَا ÙƒَÙ…َا جَاءَتْ
"Pass them on as they came" — without asking how.
What strikes me is that these four men lived in four different cities and represented four different centres of learning. They were not coordinating. The agreement is evidence that this was simply the working assumption of the period, not one scholar's idiosyncrasy.
| Scholar | Died | Centre |
|---|---|---|
| Malik ibn Anas | 179 AH | Madinah |
| Al-Awza'i | 157 AH | Syria (Beirut and Damascus) |
| Sufyan al-Thawri | 161 AH | Kufa |
| Al-Layth ibn Sa'd | 175 AH | Egypt |
What it permits
Reciting and affirming the texts exactly as revealed, in the words they use.
What it forbids
Asking after the modality, and inventing explanations the revelation did not give.
What it protects
Both ditches at once — you neither picture God as a creature nor empty the texts of meaning.
Seeing God in the hereafter
On one question Malik was emphatically positive rather than cautious: whether the believers will see God on the Day of Judgement. He affirmed it without hedging.
Ùˆُجُوهٌ ÙŠَÙˆْÙ…َئِØ°ٍ Ù†َّاضِرَØ©ٌ Ø¥ِÙ„َÙ‰ٰ رَبِّÙ‡َا Ù†َاظِرَØ©ٌ
Some faces, that Day, will be radiant, looking at their Lord. Qur'an 75:22-23
He read this together with its counterpart, which describes those denied the same thing.
ÙƒَÙ„َّا Ø¥ِÙ†َّÙ‡ُÙ…ْ عَÙ† رَّبِّÙ‡ِÙ…ْ ÙŠَÙˆْÙ…َئِØ°ٍ Ù„َّÙ…َØْجُوبُونَ
No! Indeed, from their Lord, that Day, they will be veiled. Qur'an 83:15
The argument from pairing these two is neat, and it isn't only Malik's. If being veiled from God is the punishment described for one group, then the vision granted to the other group must be of God Himself. Otherwise the contrast collapses.
When someone suggested that "looking at their Lord" meant looking at His reward rather than at Him, Malik rejected it flatly. The reports have him saying they had lied, and that the believer will look at God.
His argument from Musa
He pointed to the prophet Musa عليه السلام asking to see God (7:143). A prophet, he reasoned, would not ask for something impossible or absurd. The answer "you will not see Me" concerned this perishable world; what endures will be seen by those who endure.
Note the shape of this. Malik is not speculating about the mechanics of the vision — he never says how it works. He affirms that it happens, because the texts say so, and stops. Same method, opposite direction.
This is the clearest evidence that his approach is not agnosticism. A scholar who simply avoided saying anything about God would have hedged here too. Malik affirms flatly where the texts are explicit and refuses flatly where they are silent. The line falls where the revelation falls, not where his comfort does.
The uncreated Qur'an
The other issue where Malik was uncompromising was the question of whether the Qur'an is created.
This sounds abstract now. In his century it was the central theological controversy in the Muslim world. The Mu'tazila argued that the Qur'an, as God's speech, must be a created thing, since only God is eternal and anything else would compromise His oneness. The opposing position — Malik's — held that God's speech is an attribute of God Himself and therefore uncreated.
Malik took that position, and he took it severely. Asked about someone who taught otherwise, he judged such a person a zindiq — a heretic — and held that the authorities should punish and detain him until he recanted.
I've summarised rather than quoted the punishment language, and I want to be clear why. These are eighth-century juristic rulings addressed to a state authority about the handling of public heresy in a specific legal order. They are not instructions to individuals, then or now, and quoting them as slogans stripped of that setting misrepresents both the man and the law he was working within.
The theological point underneath is what carries forward: God's speech is an attribute of His essence rather than a creature standing outside Him. That position became the mainstream Sunni one, and it is what the article of faith about the uncreated Qur'an refers to.
The inquisition he did not live to see
Malik died in 179 AH. Within about forty years the question he had answered became the subject of a state inquisition.
Under the caliph al-Ma'mun, from 218 AH, the doctrine that the Qur'an is created was made official policy. Judges and scholars were examined on it. Those who refused to affirm it lost their positions, and some were imprisoned. The episode is known as the mihna.
What was at stake
Not only the theology, but who decides doctrine — the caliph and his appointed scholars, or the community of hadith scholars.
Ahmad ibn Hanbal
The best-known figure to refuse. He was imprisoned and beaten, and his refusal made him the emblem of the traditionist position.
The outcome
The policy was abandoned under al-Mutawakkil. The scholars, not the state, won the argument about who defines creed.
Why it matters here
Malik's position, taken before the pressure came, is part of what the later resistance was defending. He set the marker early.
Worth stating clearly: Malik was not part of the mihna and never faced it. But his stance is one of the reasons the traditionist camp had a settled position to hold when the test arrived.
A report worth handling carefully
One saying attributed to Malik gets quoted constantly in arguments about where God is: "Allah is above the heaven, and His knowledge is in every place."
The meaning is unobjectionable and is soundly reported from a number of early figures. But the specific attribution to Malik is contested, and anyone using it should know that.
Presented as: a settled, well-known statement of Imam Malik.
It comes through a single narrator, Abdullah ibn Nafi al-Sa'igh, and is recorded by Abdullah ibn Ahmad in al-Sunnah, Abu Dawud in al-Masa'il, al-Ajurri in al-Shari'a and al-Lalaka'i. Ibn Nafi's memory was criticised — Imam Ahmad considered him weak in hadith, and Ibn Adi noted that he related oddities specifically from Malik. Abu Ghudda observed that the report is contradicted by what is mass-transmitted from him. Some scholars grade the chain sound; others reject it as a lone report from a weak transmitter. It is genuinely disputed.
My own view is that you can cite the position without leaning on this particular chain, because the underlying idea — that God is exalted above creation while His knowledge encompasses everything — is reported from many others with better support. Using a contested attribution when a solid one is available is a needless weakness in an argument.
This is the same discipline I'd apply to a fabricated hadith or a misattributed scholar's quotation. A position doesn't become more true by being attached to a bigger name.
The general rule
When a saying is theologically useful to a particular camp and rests on a single weak transmitter and that transmitter is specifically noted for oddities from the very scholar in question, the correct response is caution, whichever camp you belong to.
His objection to kalam
Malik's hostility to speculative theology was broad, and it rested on an argument worth restating because it is genuinely good.
His reasoning, as reported, ran roughly like this. The Prophet ï·º taught his community the smallest details of daily life, down to the etiquette of relieving oneself. Is it then plausible that he left the community without adequate teaching on the single most important matter there is — the reality of God?
The force of the argument
If the fundamentals of belief required the technical apparatus of speculative theology to be understood, then the first generation — who had none of it — would have been the worst-informed Muslims in history. Malik took that conclusion to be obviously false, and reasoned backwards from it.
He also had a practical standard for what tawhid amounts to. He anchored it in the Prophet's statement that he was commanded to fight until people testify that there is no deity worthy of worship except God — taking the point that what secures a person's life and property in this world is that testimony, not a mastery of theological argument.
That is a striking place to locate the essence of monotheism. Not in a definition, but in a threshold that anyone can cross.
It's worth noting what this objection is not. Malik is not against thinking, nor against precision — his legal work is full of both. He is against a specific move: constructing claims about God's nature from reasoning that the revelation did not authorise, and then treating those claims as binding.
The value of "I don't know"
The reports about Malik return again and again to a habit that seems minor and isn't.
He is said to have been asked large numbers of questions and to have answered most of them with la adri — I do not know. On one occasion a man is reported to have travelled a great distance with a list of questions and to have received that answer to nearly all of them, and to have asked what he was supposed to tell the people back home. Malik's reply was that he should tell them Malik does not know.
Why it belongs here
The istiwa refusal is not a one-off temper. It is the same instinct operating on the highest-stakes subject there is.
What it costs
A scholar's authority is built on answering. Declining publicly, repeatedly, spends that authority rather than building it.
What it protects
Everything he did say carries more weight, precisely because he was known to withhold when unsure.
I find this the most transferable thing about him. The temptation in religious writing is always to say one sentence more than you can support. Malik's reputation was built on the opposite.
Refusing the caliph
Two well-known episodes show the same disposition applied to power rather than to doctrine.
The first: Malik gave a legal ruling that an oath of allegiance extracted under coercion is not binding, reasoning by analogy from the principle that a coerced divorce does not take effect. This had obvious political implications during a period of contested Abbasid succession. He was arrested and publicly flogged for it. Reports differ on the details — the number of lashes, whether the caliph later apologised, whether the governor was dismissed — but the core event is well attested, and Malik did not retract the ruling.
The second: a caliph proposed that the Muwatta be adopted as the single authoritative law book for the whole empire, with copies placed in the Ka'bah and everyone required to follow it. Sources differ over which caliph made the offer.
He turned it down
His reported reason: the Companions themselves had differed on subsidiary matters, and people in different regions had received different teachings. Imposing one book would override a legitimate diversity. He declined the greatest institutional endorsement any scholar of his era could have been offered.
Both stories illustrate the same thing as the istiwa answer, in a different register. He was willing to be unhelpful — to a caliph, to a questioner, to his own influence — when helpfulness would have required overstepping.
What Malik's method actually is
Pulling it together, the method has a shape, and it is more subtle than "don't ask questions".
Affirm the text
Whatever God said of Himself is true and is stated in the words He used. No emptying out.
Deny the likeness
Nothing affirmed of God resembles a creature. Qur'an 42:11 governs everything.
Refuse the modality
"How" is not a question the subject admits. Not withheld information — an inapplicable category.
Stop there
Where the revelation is silent, silence is the correct position rather than a gap to be filled.
Ù„َÙŠْسَ ÙƒَÙ…ِØ«ْÙ„ِÙ‡ِ Ø´َÙŠْØ¡ٌ ÙˆَÙ‡ُÙˆَ السَّÙ…ِيعُ الْبَصِيرُ
There is nothing like Him, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing. Qur'an 42:11
That verse is the whole method compressed. A denial of likeness and an affirmation of real attributes, in the same breath, with no explanation of how the two fit. Malik's contribution was to treat that structure as a rule for reading everything else.
From Malik to the four rules
Later creed manuals formalise the approach into four denials. It's useful to see how directly they descend from what Malik was already doing.
| Rule | Meaning | In Malik's reply |
|---|---|---|
| No tahrif | Do not distort the wording | "The istiwa is not unknown" — the verse says something |
| No ta'til | Do not deny the attribute | "Belief in it is obligatory" |
| No takyif | Do not ask how | "Asking about it is an innovation" |
| No tamthil | Do not liken it to a creature | "The how is not comprehensible" |
All four are present in a single sentence given in a mosque in Madinah, well over a century before anyone wrote a creed manual. That is why the sentence has lasted.
Why everyone claims him
It's worth being honest that both major Sunni tendencies read Malik as their own, and both have a real textual basis for it.
The consignment reading
Emphasises "the how is not comprehensible". If the modality is inconceivable, the safest course is to affirm the word and refer its meaning entirely to God.
The affirmation reading
Emphasises "the istiwa is not unknown". If the word carries a real meaning, you affirm it as given without figurative reinterpretation.
The awkward fact
Both clauses are in the same sentence. Any reading that has to suppress half of it is doing something to the text.
The anachronism is worth naming plainly. Malik died in 179 AH. Al-Ash'ari was born in 260 AH. Asking whether Malik was an Ash'ari is like asking whether he was a Maliki — the category was built later, partly out of him.
What can be said without controversy is what he actually did: he affirmed the text, refused the modality, denied any likeness, and stopped. Every later school agrees he did that. What they disagree about is what a scholar in the fourth century or the fourteenth should do with harder cases — and on that, Malik left no instructions, which is rather the point.
Where I've landed: what I find most useful in Malik is not any single position but the discipline underneath them. He affirms without explaining, denies without emptying, and treats the boundary of the revelation as a real boundary rather than an invitation. He said "I don't know" enough times that it became part of his reputation, refused a caliph's offer to make his book the law of an empire, and took a flogging rather than withdraw a ruling. And he was willing to be thought unhelpful. In a subject where the temptation is always to say one sentence more than you can support, a scholar who got angry at a question he considered malformed is a useful corrective. The irony is that the one line everyone quotes from him is frequently quoted in the wrong words — which is its own small argument for checking before repeating.
Common questions
What did Imam Malik say about istiwa?
Asked how God is established over the Throne, he replied that the istiwa is not unknown, the how is not comprehensible, belief in it is obligatory and asking about it is an innovation — then had the questioner removed. The reports say he was visibly angry, because the question assumes that establishment is the kind of act that has a modality.
Is it "the how is unknown" or "the how is not comprehensible"?
The better-attested wording is al-istiwa ghayr majhul wa'l-kayf ghayr ma'qul — "the istiwa is not unknown, and the how is not comprehensible" — transmitted by Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani and by al-Bayhaqi from Yahya ibn Yahya al-Tamimi. The popular English version, "the istiwa is known and the how is unknown", says something subtly different: that a manner exists but is hidden, rather than that the category does not apply.
Who was Imam Malik?
Malik ibn Anas, born in Madinah around 93 AH and died there in 179 AH. He was known as Imam Dar al-Hijrah, the scholar of the city of migration, and taught in the Prophet's mosque for decades. His Muwatta is among the earliest surviving books in Islam, and the Maliki school of law descends from his teaching.
What is "pass them on as they came"?
Al-Walid ibn Muslim reported asking Malik, al-Awza'i, Sufyan al-Thawri and al-Layth ibn Sa'd about narrations mentioning God's attributes, and all four told him amirruha kama ja'at — pass them on as they came, without asking how. The four represented Madinah, Syria, Kufa and Egypt, which is why the agreement carries weight.
Did Imam Malik believe the believers will see God?
Yes, and he affirmed it strongly. He cited Qur'an 75:22-23 on radiant faces looking at their Lord, paired with 83:15 on the disbelievers being veiled from their Lord — reasoning that the contrast only works if the vision is of God Himself. He rejected the reading that "looking" meant looking at God's reward, and pointed to Musa's request in 7:143 as evidence that the request is not absurd.
What did Imam Malik say about the Qur'an being created?
He held that the Qur'an is the uncreated speech of God, an attribute of His essence rather than a created thing. He regarded the contrary claim — associated with the Mu'tazila — as heresy and held that the authorities should detain and punish such a person until he recanted. These were eighth-century juristic rulings addressed to a state authority, not instructions to individuals.
Was Imam Malik involved in the mihna?
No. The inquisition over the created Qur'an began under the caliph al-Ma'mun in 218 AH, roughly forty years after Malik died. Ahmad ibn Hanbal is the figure most associated with resisting it. Malik's earlier position on the question is part of what the traditionist camp was defending when the test came.
Did Imam Malik say "Allah is above the heaven and His knowledge is in every place"?
It is attributed to him, but the attribution is disputed. It comes through a single narrator, Abdullah ibn Nafi al-Sa'igh, whose memory was criticised — Imam Ahmad graded him weak in hadith and Ibn Adi noted he related oddities specifically from Malik. Some scholars accept the chain, others reject it. The underlying position is soundly reported from many other early figures, so it is better to cite those.
Why was Imam Malik opposed to kalam?
His argument was that the Prophet taught his community even the etiquette of relieving oneself, so it is implausible that he left them inadequately taught about God. If speculative theology were necessary to understand the fundamentals of faith, the first generation would have been the worst-informed Muslims in history — which he took to be plainly false.
Was Imam Malik an Ash'ari or an Athari?
Neither, strictly, since he died in 179 AH — al-Ash'ari was not born until around 260 AH. Both later tendencies read him as supporting their approach: those who consign the meaning to God point to "the how is not comprehensible", while those who affirm the wording as given point to "the istiwa is not unknown". Both clauses sit in the same sentence.
Why did Imam Malik refuse to have the Muwatta made official?
A caliph proposed adopting it as the single law book of the empire, with copies placed in the Ka'bah. Malik declined, reasoning that the Companions themselves had differed on subsidiary matters and that people in different regions had received different teachings, so imposing one book would override a legitimate diversity. Sources differ over which caliph made the offer.
Was Imam Malik punished by the authorities?
Yes. He ruled that an oath of allegiance given under coercion is not binding, reasoning from the principle that a coerced divorce does not take effect — a ruling with obvious political implications during a contested Abbasid succession. He was arrested and publicly flogged. Reports differ on the details, including the number of lashes and whether the caliph later apologised, but he did not retract the ruling.
What are the four rules for the divine attributes?
No tahrif (distorting the wording), no ta'til (denying the attribute), no takyif (asking how) and no tamthil (likening it to a creature). All four are present in Malik's single reply about istiwa, well over a century before anyone compiled a creed manual, which is why his answer became the standard reference.
Comments
Post a Comment