—absolute in His Essence, His attributes, His might, and His dominion.

6 – Indwelling (ḥulūl) is categorically negated for Him, exalted is He. He is with His creation through His knowledge and His all-encompassing awareness; He is with the believers and the virtuous through His special protection and care; and He is with the worshippers who prostrate and supplicate by His hearing, His response, His giving, and His gracious favor.

7 – Imam al-Juwayni said: When a servant is certain that Allah, exalted is He, is above the heaven, high over His Throne, unrestricted and without modality, his heart gains a qiblah toward which it faces in his prayer, his orientation, and his supplication. Whoever does not know his Lord as being above His heavens upon His Throne remains bewildered, unable to discern the direction of the One he worships. When such a person enters the prayer and pronounces the opening takbīr, his heart turns toward the Throne, exalting his Lord above confinement, believing that in His exaltedness He is near to His creation—that He is with them by His knowledge, hearing, and sight, by His encompassing power and will—while His Essence is above all things. When the heart experiences this during the prayer or in turning to Him, it shines and is illuminated by faith; the rays of divine grandeur reflect upon his intellect, spirit, and soul; his breast expands, his faith grows stronger, and he declares his Lord free of the attributes of creation such as confinement or indwelling. At that moment he tastes something of what the foremost, those brought near, have tasted.

Shaykh Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī said: Our Lord is upon His Throne, above all of His creatures, as the texts of the Qur’an and Sunnah and the reports of the Companions and the righteous predecessors have recurrently affirmed. Yet, despite that, He encompasses the whole universe, and He has informed us that wherever a servant turns, he is facing the Countenance of Allah.

8 – One version of the hadith states, “in front of his face.” Al-Ḥāfiẓ and others said: This rationale shows that spitting toward the qiblah is forbidden, whether inside the mosque or elsewhere, and all the more so for the person who is praying.

9 – Al-Bukhārī (415) and Muslim (552) relate, through the narration of Anas, that the Prophet ﷺ said: “Spitting in the mosque is a sin, and its expiation is to bury it.”