finds that He draws away from him by the distance between earth and heaven. Or, whenever His servants draw closer to Allah, He, together with His mercy, draws away from them by the distance between heaven and earth, according to your claim. You know full well, ignorant man, that this is an impossible interpretation that leads to misguidance. The hadith itself invalidates this interpretation and gives it the lie. Yet no hadith enrages the Jahmiyyah more or more decisively refutes their claim. For they do not acknowledge that Allah is above His Throne, above His heavens; instead, they maintain that He is on earth just as He is in heaven. How, then, can someone beneath the lowest heaven—on earth and in all its places—descend to it? The very wording of the hadith refutes their claim and demolishes their arguments.

He said: “Another point is that every person of reason and judgment understands that speech does not turn into a figure with a tongue and a mouth, speaking and interceding. Since Muslims unanimously recognized this to be so, they knew that this was