he may be told: As for those who say that He is above the Throne but is not a body—namely, the leading scholars of your own school, the Kullābiyyah, and numerous groups of jurists, hadith scholars, and Sufis, a position which al-Ash'arī identified as that of the people of the Sunnah and the adherents of hadith—they deny this necessary connection. They say: “We do not concede that, if He is in a direction—in the sense that He Himself is above the Throne—He must occupy either one spatial region or more than one. This necessary connection applies only if that which is above the world is a body. But if you agree with us that He is not a body, then the proposition becomes: if something that is not a body is above the world, or if something that is not a body is in a direction, it must occupy either one spatial region or more than one. Yet it is known that what is not a body does not occupy a spatial region in the technical sense—neither one nor more than one. This is plain and clear.”

If you say, “This is contradictory, for if He is above the world or in a direction, He must be a body,” you are told, first: You began your discussion of this question by stating that denying that something is a body does not entail denying that it occupies a particular spatial region. Once you have conceded this to them, you cannot dispute it with them, for this is the central issue. Thus the proposition, by agreement between you and them, would be that