And he, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“There are four gardens of Firdaws: two gardens whose vessels, ornaments, and everything within them are made of gold, and two gardens whose vessels, ornaments, and everything within them are made of silver. Nothing stands between the people and their looking upon their Lord except the cloak of majesty upon His Face in the Garden of Eden.”

And he, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“When the people of Paradise enter Paradise, a caller will announce: ‘O people of Paradise, Allah has made you a promise that He wishes to fulfil for you.’ They will say: ‘What is it? Has He not brightened our faces, made our scales heavy, admitted us to Paradise, and protected us from the Fire?’ Then He will remove the veil, and they will look upon Him. He will have given them nothing dearer to them than looking upon Him. This is the additional reward.”

These and other hadiths are found in the authentic collections. The early generations and the leading scholars accepted them, and the people of the Sunnah and the community are agreed upon them. Only the Jahmiyyah and their followers among the Muʿtazilah, the Rāfidah, and others like them deny or distort them: those who deny Allah’s attributes, seeing Him, and other such matters. They are the deniers of the divine attributes, the worst of all created beings. Allah’s religion takes a middle course between these people’s denial of what His Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, reported concerning the Hereafter, and the extremists’ belief that He can be seen with physical eyes in this world. Both positions are false.

Those who claim to see Him with their physical eyes in this world are misguided, as explained above. If they add to this the claim that they see Him in particular persons—whether righteous people, beardless youths, kings, or others—their misguidance becomes all the greater