and your head? Do you believe there is anyone above?”

He replied:

“I seek Allah’s forgiveness.”

He abandoned that view when it became clear to him that his belief contradicted his natural disposition. I then explained to him why this position was unsound. He repented of it and returned to the belief of the Muslims, firmly rooted in their natural dispositions.

[Al-Rāzī’s discussion of direction in Lubāb al-Arba'īn]

Al-Rāzī said:

“The opponent also argued that a body occupies a spatial location and lies in a direction solely because it subsists in its own right.”

He means that this holds true of everything that subsists in its own right.

“And if He is in a direction, He is in the direction above, because assigning the noblest to the noblest is fitting, and because people, guided by their natural dispositions and sound hearts, raise their hands towards it when imploring and supplicating.”

He said:

“The answer is that a body’s occupancy of a spatial location and its being in a direction may be due to its particular essence. For it is not necessary that everything possessing an attribute should possess it because of another attribute.”

[Response to him]

The objection to this is as follows:

If by its particular essence you mean that which