If someone objects: “When we describe our Lord as having existed in the Azal (eternity) without being in any place, and then He created places and therefore ‘entered’ a place, this implies on your view an admission of contradictory change and movement—since He would have been without place in the Azal and then come to be in a place instead of nowhere,” one may reply: “You yourself claim that He was nowhere and then became present everywhere; thus your deity has changed, moving from non-place to every place.” If he counters that “He was eternally present in every place, just as He is now, since He created all places and things with Him,” this too is untenable. (See Ijtima‘ al-Juyush al-Islamiyyah [The Gathering of the Islamic Armies], p. 97.) Allah, Exalted be He, is above the Throne in the Heaven, as He has informed of Himself and as His Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) has informed. ‘Highness’ (uluww) is established by necessity, innate disposition, and the natural workings of reason. Yet this does not imply that He is present among His creatures, for the direction (jihat) affirmed for Allah is a non-existential direction—‘direction’ in the sense of an affirmed aspect, not a spatial reality. Imam Ibn Taymiyya clarifies the correct understanding of ‘direction’ to be affirmed for Allah: “As for one who attributes a ‘direction’ (jihat) to Allah: if he believes that Allah is inside the creatures, contained by created things, confined by the heavens, or that some of the creatures are above Him and some beneath Him, he is an innovator gone astray. Likewise, if he holds that Allah depends on anything to support Him—whether the Throne or anything else—he too is an innovator. And likewise if he likens Allah’s attributes to those of the created beings, he is misled. For the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and reason demonstrate that Allah is in no way like the creatures; that He is independent of all needs; and that He is wholly distinct from and high above His creation. Whoever believes that the Exalted Creator is separate from the creatures and above His heavens on His Throne, distinct from His creation, affirms that nothing of His essence is in the creatures, nor is anything of the creatures in His essence; that Allah is independent even of the Throne and all else, in need of nothing from the creatures. Rather, while established (istiwā’) upon His Throne, He upholds the Throne and its supporters by His power. The establishment (istiwā’) of Allah is not like the establishment of the creatures. One affirms for Allah what He affirmed for Himself of names and attributes, rejects any resemblance to the creatures, and knows that Allah “laysa kamithlihi shay’un” (“there is nothing like Him”), in His essence, attributes, or actions. This belief accords with that of the pious predecessors and the imams.” (See Introduction to The Refutation of the Conflict between Reason and Revelation, vol. 1, pp. 38–39.) Thus the correct belief concerning direction and place is that Allah is high above His creatures, separate from and distinct from them—entailing a non-existential rather than an existential direction—because nothing created lies above the Throne so as to contain Allah. Notably, the philosopher Abu l-‘Udayd Ibn Rushd had anticipated Ibn Taymiyya in this detailed exposition of direction, a position that Sheikh al-Islam endorsed as conforming to the truth.