these things. Rather, since light is the loftiest of all imaginable things, He used it as an illustration for them, for light is the thing most familiar to sense and imagination. Through this manner of representation, they could also understand the realities of the Hereafter: those realities were represented to them through things accessible to imagination and the senses.

Thus, whenever revelation’s descriptions of Allah Most High are understood according to their apparent meaning, neither this difficulty nor any other arises. For if it is said that He is light and that He has a veil of light, as stated in the Quran and the established reports of the Sunnah, and then that the believers will see Him in the Hereafter just as the sun is seen, this gives rise to neither doubt nor difficulty for the general public or for scholars. For scholars have established by demonstration that this state consists in an increase in knowledge. Yet whenever this is explicitly stated to the general public, either revealed religion as a whole loses its validity in their eyes, or they declare the person who explicitly tells them this to be an unbeliever. Whoever departs from the path of revelation in these matters has strayed from the straight way.