section_path: Pillars of iman/God/Names and attributes
section_name: Names and attributes
paragraph_text: Names and attributes
  
  The Sunnis confess that the names of God cannot be said to be anything other than God, as Muʿtazilites and Kharijites claim. Rather, they teach that there are correlating attributes (ṣifāt) which exist in each of the names of God mentioned in the Quran: God is alive through life (ḥayāh), knowing through knowledge (ʿilm), mighty through power (ʿqudra), wanting through will (irāda), hearing through hearing (samʿ), seeing through sight (baṣar) and speaking through Speech (kalām). The attributes are not identical to God, nor are they anything different from him. Only those attributes are ascribed to God which he ascribed to himself (in the Quran) or which his prophet ascribed to him. And every attribute that he or his prophet has ascribed to him is a real attribute, not an attribute figuratively.