above the heaven, that He is the Lord of the pathways of ascent, that He is Exalted in degrees, that the angels ascend to Him and descend from Him, that He descends to the heaven of this world, and that the believers will behold Him with their very eyes, plainly, from above them—many times over. Were all the texts and reports on this matter to be gathered, they would not be fewer than the texts and reports concerning rulings.

It is therefore patently impossible and manifest misguidance to interpret all of this contrary to its reality and outward sense, to claim that it is figurative speech and metaphor, that the truth lies with the statements of the deniers who strip the attributes, and that their reinterpretations are what these passages were meant to convey. Such a claim inevitably entails one of three reproaches—one must fall into at least one of them—namely: impugning the speaker’s knowledge, or his clarity of expression, or his sincerity.

To elaborate: either the speaker of these texts knew that the truth lies in the reinterpretations of those negating disablers, or he did not. If he did not know this—while the truth supposedly lies there—then that is an affront to his knowledge. If he did know that the truth is as they claim, one of two possibilities remains: either he was able to articulate their phrases—which, in their view, alone declare Allah transcendent above anthropomorphism, resemblance, and corporeality, and without which no one truly knows Him—or he was unable to employ those expressions. If he was unable, that would constitute a blemish upon his eloquence, and the heirs of the Sabians, the offspring of the philosophers, and the insolent Muʿtazilites