He has also told us that He has risen over the Throne. These texts confirm one another, and reason likewise agrees with them, indicating that He, glorified be He, is separate from His creation, above His heavens. It is also self-evidently impossible to reason that a being should exist which is neither separate from the universe nor of the same kind as it. If seeing Him necessarily entails these meanings, then this is true. If you call this an affirmation of direction and corporeality, that designation does not negate what is known through revelation and reason, since, in these circumstances, the meaning of this statement is ruled out by neither revelation nor reason.

They are also asked:

“What do you mean when you say that this affirms direction, and that direction is impossible? By ‘direction,’ do you mean something that actually exists, or something that has no actual existence?”

If you mean something that actually exists—given that nothing exists except the Creator and the created, and that Allah is above His heavens, separate from His creation—then, under these circumstances, He is not within an actually existing direction. Thus, your claim that whatever is seen must be within an actually existing direction is false: the surface of the universe is visible, yet it is not within another universe.

If, however, you interpret direction as something that has no actual existence, as when you say that a body occupies space and that space is a conceived place, and regard what lies beyond the universe as space, then you are told:

“If direction—and space—is something that has no actual existence, then it is nothing. Whatever is within a nonexistent direction or nonexistent space is therefore not within anything. There is no difference between saying, ‘This is not within anything,’ and saying, ‘It is within nothingness, or something nonexistent.’”

If, then,