Rather, the moon is one of Allah’s signs, among the smallest of His creatures. It is situated in the sky, yet it is with the traveller wherever he may be, and with those who are not travelling. He, glorified be He, is above the Throne, watching over His creation, overseeing them and fully aware of them, along with the other meanings of His Lordship. All these statements that Allah Most High has made—that He is above the Throne and that He is with us—are true in their real sense and require no distortion. They must, however, be safeguarded against false assumptions.”

The second question:

Some of them said: “We affirm the transmitted wording, such as that in the hadith of al-‘Abbās—the hadith of the mountain goats—‘Allah is above the Throne.’ But we do not say ‘above the heavens,’ nor do we say ‘upon the Throne.’”

They also said: “We say:

‘The Most Merciful established Himself upon the Throne.’

But we do not say ‘Allah established Himself upon the Throne,’ nor do we describe Him as ‘established.’”

They repeated this point several times: namely, that the transmitted wording must be repeated exactly, without replacing it with synonymous wording, and that no meaning whatsoever is to be understood from it. Nor should it be said that it indicates any attribute of Allah at all. We shall discuss this at length in the second session, as we shall relate, if Allah Most High wills.

The third question:

They said: “The comparison with the moon likens Allah’s being in heaven to the moon’s being in the sky.”

The fourth question:

They said: “You say, ‘True in their real sense.’ The real sense is the literal linguistic meaning, and the only thing understood from that literal meaning is the establishment of physical bodies and their being above other things. The Arabs coined these expressions only for physical bodies. Thus, affirming the real sense is nothing but attributing corporeality to Allah, and denying corporeality while affirming this is either a contradiction or mere appeasement.”