stated that al-Zahiri didn’t hold anthropotheistic beliefs. al-Shahrastani had stated:
“As for Aĥmad ibn Ĥanbal, Dāwūd ibn `Alī al-Işfahānī and a group of Imāms from the predecessors, they took the methodological course of the early predecessors from the people of narrations—such as Mālik ibn Anas and Muqātil ibn Sulaymān—and followed the safe path.
They said: ‘We believe in whatever is mentioned in the Book and the Sunna, and we do not come to grips with the interpretation; after we certainly know that Allāh, the Powerful and Exalted, does not resemble anything from the creation and that all what is portrayed in imagination is created and foreordained.’
And they used to guard themselves from anthropomorphism to such a degree, that they said: ‘Whosoever moved his hand during the recitation of His statement: ‘…I created with My hands?’ or pointed with his two fingers during his narration: ‘The heart of the believer is between two fingers of the Merciful,’ his hand should be cut and his two fingers removed.”
Ismaili Shi’ites have, perhaps, been more accurate in that for which they criticized al-Zahiri. al-Nu’man was particularly critical of al-Zahiri for rejecting analogical reason yet at the same time accepting inference as a valid means of logical deduction, a position for which he also criticized al-Zahiri’s son and school in general.
Being steeped in esoteric philosophy, the Mu’tazila were quite hostile towards al-Zahiri and his school. Although some prominent Mu’tazilite figures such as al-Nazzam denied the validity of analogical reasoning as al-Zahiri did, they also denied literalism and the validity of consensus, and most of them found al-Zahiri’s ideas to be ridiculous.