Abū Bakr, to establishing the possibility of seeing Allah through revelation, just as its actual occurrence is known through revelation without dispute. Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Rāzī discussed this argument of al-Ashʿarī concerning the vision of Allah in his Nihāya, along with the objections that expose its weakness.

With this understood, two points should be recognized. The first is that the approach adopted by those who affirm Allah’s being above creation—sometimes appealing to self-evident knowledge and sometimes to the analogical argument advanced by Ibn al-Haysam and others—is sounder than their approach to the vision of Allah, in which they likewise appeal sometimes to self-evident knowledge and sometimes to analogy. As we explained earlier, knowledge that Allah Most High is above His creation is more readily recognized by the innate disposition, more widely attested in revelation, and more firmly established among the early generations of the Muslim community and its leading scholars than knowledge that He can be seen.

The Jahmiyyah used to conceal their denial of this while openly denying the vision of Allah and similar matters. Through their openly professed denial of that vision and their assertion that the Quran was created, they sought to advance their concealed denial that Allah is above the Throne. The imams of the early generations knew this about them: they recognized them by the tenor of their speech and inferred from what