their denial and taʿṭīl (stripping Allah of His attributes), which they never dared to make public in the time of the early generations and the great Imams. They say:
“Allah is neither within the universe nor outside it; there is no Lord above the heavens, and there is no God upon the Throne.”
This monstrous innovation—an assertion worse than what many Jews and Christians maintain (1)—was never proclaimed by any Muʿtazilite before the general populace, nor did they invite ordinary people to it. Rather, the Salaf only inferred that they were hiding this view from the other positions they openly expressed.
Your agreement with the Muʿtazilites in what they concealed of this taʿṭīl and ilḥād (atheistic deviation) is a far graver conflict with both revelation and sound reason than the issues on which you opposed them concerning the Vision and the Qur’an. Every rational person knows that the Qur’an’s proof for Allah’s exaltedness above His Throne is stronger than its proof that Allah will be seen. Nowhere in the Qur’an is there a verse that might lead a listener to imagine that Allah is neither inside the world nor outside it, whereas there are verses that some imagine negate the Vision. Yet they (2) set the many clear, unequivocal verses affirming exaltation against what they fancy indicates that He, in His very essence, is in every place—while you hold to neither stance. Consequently, you possess not a single verse that even hints at your negation, much less one that states it explicitly or implicitly; nor do you have any hadith from the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, nor a statement of any Companion, Successor, or Imam.
Your final resort is to cling to a fabricated report, such as the one you ascribe to ʿAli, claiming that he said: “He who determined the where is not to be asked, ‘Where?’” This, by unanimous agreement of the scholars, is a lie against ʿAli; it has no chain of transmission (3). The same applies to the report about the angels