Third, he said: “Do you experience any difficulty in seeing the sun when no cloud obscures it? Do you experience any difficulty in seeing the moon when no cloud obscures it?” He thus compared seeing Him to seeing the most clearly visible objects when no veil separate from the observer intervenes between the observer and what is seen. Those who say that He is seen without being in any direction regard it as impossible for a veil separate from His servants to stand between Him and them, since a veil can conceal only a body or something located in a direction. They say that the veil consists in perception not being created in the eye. Yet the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, compared seeing Him to seeing these two great luminaries when no veil obscures them.

Fourth, he stated that they would experience no difficulty in seeing Him; in another hadith, that they would suffer no hardship. Such a denial of harm and hardship presupposes that the observer could otherwise experience them. Yet what they call seeing—seeing something that is not in any direction relative to the observer, neither above him nor in any other direction—cannot conceivably involve harm or hardship that would need to be denied. This is unlike seeing something that faces the observer and is above him: he may experience hardship or harm through crowding, or eyestrain because the object is faint, as with the crescent moon, or because it is bright, as with the sun and moon.

Similar to this well-known hadith is the report narrated by Qays ibn Abī Hāzim