in supplication. It is well known that the position that Allah is above the Throne, or that He may be pointed to with the hands in supplication, is the position of this community’s early generations, its leading scholars, and its ordinary believers. If all these affirm the meaning that you have called corporealism, there is no harm in affirming it, and it cannot legitimately be rejected without proof. Yet in answering this argument, you have offered nothing that qualifies as an answer.

In the preceding argument, we explained that if pointing to Allah in supplication necessarily entails the supplicant’s belief that Allah is a body, then—unless his account is false—it is established that this is the position of those whose statements constitute authoritative proof. Here, however, the point is that a living, powerful being can only be distinct from everything else. This is what he means by its being a body. This meaning is what the community’s early generations and leading scholars agreed upon: although their expressions varied, they were entirely consistent and in agreement.

In short, he cannot dispute that this is the position of a great many scholars of hadith, jurisprudence, Sufism, and speculative theology. There must therefore be proof of its falsehood. If he says that the proof of its falsehood is what he has presented to deny that Allah is a body, the reply is: We have already presented what demonstrates the unsoundness of those proofs.

It may then be said—and this is the thirty-fourth argument—that this does not constitute a valid answer to what you mention. He may be told: What you have said amounts to this: supplicants raise their hands because they believe Allah is a body, since they have never witnessed anyone who is supplicated, living, knowing, and powerful, except a body. It is well known that, even if those supplicants who raise their hands did not include anyone whose word constitutes authoritative proof and whose word it is disbelief to contradict,