the answer to the claims advanced by the Jahmiyyah. In sum, there are two possibilities. The first is that people are mistaken in raising their hands this way, believing that Allah is above when He is not. This is the answer he gives in his Nihāyah. The second is that their hands are raised toward some created thing: the angels, the noble direction, or the Throne regarded as the direction to face. Anyone who reflects on what we have explained will recognize that both possibilities are untenable. We shall now explain this in detail.

The eighth point: His statement that people raise their hands upward because the upper direction is nobler than the lower—since light comes from it, as does the air needed for breathing—and that they look toward it, amounts to saying that the sustenance human beings need, namely water and air, as well as light, comes from the upper direction, which is therefore nobler.

The first response is that their need for the earth and what it contains is undoubtedly greater. It is upon the earth that they dwell; from it grows their sustenance, namely vegetation; and upon it are the animals. Of it Allah Most High says:

“There you will live, there you will die, and from there you will be brought forth.” {25} [al-A‘rāf 25]

This is why they look toward the earth and what it contains more often than toward the sky and what