what he finds in the books of Abū al-Husayn, Abū al-Maʿālī, and similar Muslim thinkers; as for the other doctrines of the earlier and later philosophers, he is unfamiliar with [them]—and this is negligence) in scholarship, truthfulness in speech, and familiarity with the doctrines and religions professed by the people of the earth.

He should therefore be told:

Your claim that the majority of rational people agree that He does not occupy space or lie in any particular direction, and that He, Most High, neither inheres in the world nor is separate from it in any direction—and your understanding of this as meaning that He is neither upon the Throne nor above the world—is incorrect, if by rational people worthy of consideration one means those who truly deserve that designation. For this position is not known to have been held by any of Allah’s prophets and messengers, who are the most perfect of creation and the foremost in intellect and knowledge. It is found neither in Allah’s Books revealed to them nor in any reports transmitted from them—neither from the last of them nor from the prophets of the Children of Israel