and the earth with His other Hand, then He will shake them (1).

He further informed them that “the seven heavens and the seven earths are in His palm—exalted is He—like a mustard seed in the palm of one of you (2)” (3), and that “He places the heavens on a Finger, the earths on a Finger, the mountains on a Finger, the trees on a Finger, and the rest of creation on a Finger” (4).

So which created hands, and which finger, could ever resemble this Hand and this Finger (5) such that affirming them should be called assimilation or anthropomorphism?

May Allah fight the people of distortion and forced reinterpretation, the advocates of imaginative allegory, those who declare the believers ignorant (6), and the champions of anthropomorphism and comparison. How much of the genuine truths of faith and the divine sciences have they been deprived, and what have they received in exchange but the refuse of minds and the dregs of ideas!

How like they are to those whose food was manna and quail, provided without toil or hardship, yet who preferred instead fūm (7), lentils, and onions. It is Allah’s constant practice to humiliate whoever chooses the inferior over the superior, and to make him a lesson for people of insight.

The first of this breed was Iblis: he refused to prostrate to Adam out of arrogance, so Allah afflicted him with leadership.