you see the sun and the moon.” He thus stated that seeing Him is like seeing the sun and the moon, the most clearly visible objects in this world. People see them only above themselves, in a direction relative to themselves. Indeed, it is self-evident to reason that seeing something that is neither within the world nor outside it is impossible. This is agreed upon by the generality of rational people among humankind: the early generations, the imams, the scholars of hadith and jurisprudence, the Sufis, the majority of speculative theologians—both those who affirm and those who deny—and the philosophers.

The only dissenters are a group of al-Ashʿarī’s followers and those jurists who agree with them, as al-Qādī Abū Yaʿlā, in al-Muʿtamad, and others may do. They repeat what those people say concerning the vision: that He is seen, but not in any direction. They thereby commit themselves to what rational people agree belongs to the category of