statement could conceive of this only as seeing something situated in a direction, and that anything else was neither known nor conceivable to them from the word “seeing”; yet the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and the Companions and Successors who shared this consensus told people that they would see their Lord, without speaking of seeing Him without direction or using any expression conveying that meaning. Rather, he said, “Just as you see the sun and the moon,” thus likening seeing Him to seeing something situated in a direction. It follows of necessity that the seeing indicated by the texts transmitted from the Messenger and the consensus of the earliest Muslims is the seeing familiar to people, namely, seeing something situated in a direction. This is clear.

Moreover, he has stated that seeing something that is not situated in a direction is called apprehension, and that when the term “apprehension” means seeing, it denotes a particular kind of seeing: seeing something finite that is situated in a direction. As for something not situated in a direction, seeing it is not called apprehension. Accordingly, the words of the Exalted, “Vision does not apprehend Him,” mean that vision does not encompass Him as something finite, nor apprehend Him as finite and bounded.

What he has said here is sound, although he has not fully developed its proof, for this is how the leading scholars of the early generations explained the verse. What the Muʿtazilah report from Ibn ʿAbbās—that he interpreted the verse as denying seeing—is falsely attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās. Rather, it is established through mass-transmitted reports from him that he affirmed seeing