Now, in the issue before us, the term istawā (established Himself, rose, became settled) was never restricted in Arabic usage to the specific sense of a human being—say, sitting on his couch in the literal sense—such that every other use would have to be figurative; just as the word ʿilm (knowledge) was never confined by the Arabs (1) to the particular quality that resides in the human heart and is divided into intuitive and inferential knowledge, while being applied to everything else only by way of metaphor (2). Rather, this verb sometimes appears without a preposition, as in the Almighty’s words:
“ When he reached full strength and became established ” (Q 28:14) (3); sometimes it is followed by the preposition ilā that denotes an objective, as in:
“ Then He istawā ilā the heaven ” (Q 2:29) (4); and at other times it is followed by the preposition ʿalā indicating elevation. Moreover, on some occasions the term describes Allah, and on others it describes His creatures; hence, one is not obliged to declare it literal in one context and figurative in another.

Nor may one understand from Allah’s istiwāʾ the particular characteristic that belongs to a created being but not to the Creator—just as, when Allah says,
“ And the heaven We built with Our hands ” (Q 51:47) (5),
“ And from what Our hands have fashioned—livestock… ” (Q 36:71) (6),
“ This is the workmanship of Allah, who perfected all things ” (Q 27:88) (7),
“ We wrote in the Psalms after the Reminder ” (Q 21:105) (8), and
“ We wrote for him upon the Tablets ” (Q 7:145) (9),
one must not attribute to the Lord the specifically human mode of building, crafting, working, or writing. Yet, by the same token, no Muslim would deem it lawful (10) to deny Him the reality of acting and building in a manner befitting His Majesty.