The Quran attributes "hands" and a "face" to Allah, but it also decisively denies that Allah resembles creation. The strongest reading is not that Allah is a body with limbs, but that He has real divine attributes whose reality is unlike created forms and whose modality is unknown to us.
Why the objection feels forceful
The argument is not silly. If "hand" meant a physical organ, then a being with hands, parts, size, direction, and extension would be composed and finite. Such a being would depend on its parts and could not be the necessary Creator. So the critic says: either take the words literally and accept a finite deity, or reinterpret them and abandon the plain meaning.
The problem is that this assumes the only "plain meaning" of such language is bodily. That is not how Arabic, scripture, or even ordinary speech works. "Hand" can mean power, favor, possession, generosity, support, or an attribute named "hand" without implying a human limb. The context matters, and clearer texts govern less detailed ones.
What the Quran actually makes clear
He said, "O Iblis, what prevented you from prostrating to what I created with My two hands?"
Quran 38:75
Indeed, those who pledge allegiance to you are only pledging allegiance to Allah. The hand of Allah is over their hands.
Quran 48:10
Rather, both His hands are extended; He spends however He wills.
Quran 5:64
These verses affirm what Allah affirmed for Himself. But the same Quran also gives the controlling rule:
There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the Hearing, the Seeing.
Quran 42:11
Say: He is Allah, One. Allah, the Eternal Refuge. He neither begets nor is born, nor is there to Him any equivalent.
Quran 112:1-4
So Muslims do not read one group of verses while ignoring the other. Allah hears and sees, but not with created organs or dependence. Likewise, what He calls His "hand" is affirmed without making it a limb, mass, or part of a body. The Quran never says Allah has a "body", and Islamic theology does not infer one.
The classical answer: affirm without imagining
The mainstream approach is: affirm the wording and meaning Allah revealed, deny resemblance to creation, and do not ask "how" in a physical sense. This is often summarized as "without asking how" and "without resemblance". Imam Malik's famous answer about Allah's rising over the Throne captures the method: the meaning is known in Arabic, the how is unknown, belief in it is obligatory, and speculative probing into its modality is blameworthy.
Some scholars, especially when facing crude anthropomorphism, explained certain phrases by acceptable Arabic meanings: "His hands are outstretched" means His generosity is vast; "the hand of Allah is over their hands" means His authority, support, and witnessing of their pledge. Others preferred not to specify beyond the text. These are not rival religions. They share the same boundary: Allah is real, His attributes are real, and He is not a body.
What this proves, and what it does not
The objection proves only that if one forces a bodily meaning onto the verses, that meaning would contradict the Quran's own doctrine of Allah. It does not prove that the Quran teaches corporeality. Shared words do not require shared reality. We say humans have life and knowledge, and Allah has life and knowledge, but no Muslim thinks the Creator's life is biological or His knowledge acquired through a brain.
Nor is it true that Muslims have "no text" specifying the difference. "There is nothing like unto Him" is exactly the textual rule. It does not give a diagram of the difference, because the unseen reality of the Creator is beyond created measurement. It tells us enough to worship correctly and enough to avoid imagining Allah as a creature.
So the Islamic position is neither denial of revelation nor crude literalism. We affirm what Allah revealed, stop where revelation stops, and keep the Creator exalted above composition, finitude, and need.