become clear to you from this that affirming direction is required by revelation and reason.” His statement has already been quoted. If this is so, how can the people of demonstration agree on interpreting this figuratively? And how can the slave girl’s statement that He is in heaven be something that the people of demonstration must interpret figuratively?

He should then be asked: Were the Companions, the Successors, and the leading scholars of the Muslims people of true demonstration or not? If you say, “They were not, but later thinkers were, as were some of the Sabians before us,” this contradicts what is necessarily known in the religion of Islam: that the earliest forerunners were greater in knowledge and faith than these people. If you say that they were people of demonstration, it is necessarily known that they did not interpret it as these later thinkers did. Rather, they agreed that Allah Most High is above the Throne, just as you yourself have reported the consensus of the prophets and sages on this. Their statements prohibiting such figurative interpretation are too extensive to cite here. How, then, could it be obligatory?

Furthermore, those who interpret this figuratively include no one whom you yourself commend. Such interpretation comes either from a Mu‘tazilī, or from an Ash‘arī who adopted it from him, or from someone