and they added, in respect to the second objection: “The literal sense of the ḥadīth is that Allah possesses real Fingers, yet fingers are bodily limbs; such a meaning, they claim, is corrupt and therefore cannot be meant.”
Our answer to the first objection is: the fact that the hearts of the children of Adam lie between two Fingers of the Merciful in a real sense does not necessitate direct contact or physical touch, nor does it mean that Allah’s Fingers—exalted is He—are inside our chests.
Have you not considered His words: “and the clouds that are made subservient between the sky and the earth” (al-Baqara 164)? The clouds neither touch the sky nor the earth, nor do they come into contact with them.
Likewise one says, “The worshipper’s sutrah is in front of him,” even though it neither touches nor comes into contact with him.
If “between-ness” does not require contact or touching when it concerns created things among themselves, then how much more so when it is between a created being and the Creator—He whose Footstool extends over the heavens and the earth and who encompasses all things!
Both revelation and sound reason testify that Allah is separate from His creation: He does not indwell anything of it, nor does anything of it indwell Him. The early generations were unanimously agreed upon this.
As for the second objection we reply: affirming that Allah truly has Fingers entails no corrupt implication; hence it is certainly what is intended. Allah possesses real Fingers befitting His majesty—utterly unlike the fingers of created beings.
In the two Ṣaḥīḥs it is related from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd that “a Jewish scholar came to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and said, ‘O Muḥammad! We find that Allah will place the heavens upon a Finger, the earths upon a Finger, the trees upon a Finger, the water and the dust upon a Finger, and the rest of creation upon a Finger, then He will say: I am the King.’ The Prophet ﷺ laughed until his molars became visible, affirming the scholar’s statement; then the Messenger of Allah…"