be a substance or an accident. Both are impossible, since he can conceive of no existing thing other than these two.”

And his claim:

“If He is established over the Throne, His establishment resembles that of a person upon a bed or aboard a ship, since establishment is known only in this form.”

Both have likened Allah to His creation, and both have denied the reality of what Allah has described Himself with. The first is distinguished by denying every designation of true establishment, while the second affirms a kind of establishment peculiar to created beings.

The decisive position is that held by the community that follows the middle way: Allah is established over His Throne in a manner befitting His majesty and unique to Him. Just as He is described as knowing all things, having power over all things, being All-Hearing and All-Seeing, and so forth—and it is impermissible to attribute to His knowledge and power the characteristics of accidents found in the knowledge and power of created beings—so too He, glory be to Him, is above the Throne. His being above it does not possess the characteristics of one created being’s being above another, nor entail the same implications.

Know that neither sound reason nor any authentic transmitted text requires any departure whatsoever from the way of the early Muslim generations. Yet there is no room here to answer the objections raised against the truth. If anyone has a doubt in his heart and wishes to have it resolved, doing so is easy and straightforward.

Those who oppose the Quran, the Sunnah, and the early generations of the Muslim community by reinterpreting the texts on this subject are mired in confusion. Whoever denies seeing Allah claims that reason rules it out and that he is therefore compelled to reinterpret the relevant texts. And whoever regards it as impossible that Allah has knowledge and power, or that His speech is uncreated, and the like