created, then He established Himself upon the Throne—just as He said that He measured and then guided, that He built the heaven with power, and that He is with Moses and Aaron, hearing and seeing, and the like. He never speaks of an unrestricted establishment that could apply to a creature, nor of anything broad enough to include created beings, just as He never does so with any of His other attributes. Rather, He mentions an establishment that He attributes exclusively to His noble Self.

If—by way of an impossible hypothesis—He were like His creation (far exalted is Allah above that), then His establishment would resemble theirs. But when it is known that He does not resemble His creation; that He is self-sufficient, the Creator of the Throne and of everything else; that all things depend on Him while He depends on none; and when He has mentioned only an establishment unique to Him—never one suitable for another—exactly as His knowledge, power, sight, hearing, and creating are unique to Him, how could anyone imagine that His being established upon the Throne implies any need for it, or that, were the Throne to collapse, He would fall from it? Transcendent and supremely exalted is He above what the wrongdoers and deniers say.

What is this but pure ignorance and misguidance on the part of anyone who has understood, imagined, or thought that such a meaning is the apparent sense of the wording, or who considers it possible with respect to the Lord of all worlds, who is independent of