to the agreement among peoples of differing views in pointing upward when supplicating and asking Allah to answer. This indicates their self-evident knowledge that the One whom they ask to fulfil their needs and ease their difficulties is in that direction. Thus, when the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, asked the slave woman, ‘Where is your Lord?’ the report states that she pointed toward heaven, whereupon he said, ‘She is a believer.’”

He said: “The answer to their third argument, based on pointing upward, is that this arises from familiarity, habit, and people’s customary practice. They have never observed a knowing, powerful, living being except as a body. Someone who has only ever seen black people, when imagining a person whom he addresses, will immediately picture that person as black and nothing else. Likewise, someone who has heard no language but Arabic, when conceiving a meaning, will immediately think of expressing it in Arabic words.

“Similarly, the imagination immediately pictures the one a person invokes as living, knowing, and powerful, in the form in which living and powerful beings are observed. It follows from this that he occupies a place. Moreover, the direction above is nobler because lights are found there; and since the head is the noblest bodily member, the direction nearest it is the noblest direction. Thus, it immediately occurs to the supplicant that if the one whose greatness he acknowledges is in a direction, he must be in the direction above. It is because of these and similar considerations that people came to point