a body. All these groups affirm the Essence of the Lord Most High, in accordance with the consensus of the Muslim community’s early generations and leading authorities. Yet many among those who deny and those who affirm maintain that nothing can be above the Throne unless it is compounded of parts and composed of components. The aforementioned groups reject this. This, then, is a point of disagreement between the two sides; it cannot be called a merely verbal dispute without qualification.

It may, however, be argued that if, for the person using the term, a “body” can only be something composed and compounded of components and parts, whereas these people use the term while denying this meaning, then the dispute becomes verbal. The answer is that although these people deny this meaning, they affirm another meaning which, in their opponent’s view, entails it.

Furthermore, when they say that He is self-subsistent and independent of a substratum, they mean that He is directionally separate from the world. In their view, nothing self-subsistent can be conceived of otherwise. Their opponent claims that He can be self-subsistent while being neither separate from anything else nor co-located with it, neither inside the world nor outside it.

The former say that this contradicts what is known by necessity and amounts to a denial of clear rational truth. The others reply that affirming something outside the world, directionally separate from it yet neither composed nor compounded, likewise contradicts what is known by necessity and amounts to a denial