that Allah is above the heavens. Allah, the Exalted, said:
‘Do you feel secure that He who is in heaven will not cause the earth to swallow you, whereupon it would shake?’
The Throne is above the heavens, and whatever is above is called ‘heaven’. When He says, ‘Do you feel secure that He who is in heaven’, He does not mean all the heavens; rather, He means the Throne, which is above the heavens. Do you not see that He mentioned the heavens, saying:
‘And made the moon therein a light’,
without meaning that it fills all the heavens? We see all Muslims raising their hands towards heaven when they supplicate, because Allah is established over the Throne, which is above the heavens. Were Allah not upon the Throne, they would not raise their hands towards it.
Some among the Mu‘tazilah, Jahmiyyah and Harūriyyah have said that ‘rose over’ means ‘gained dominion, ruled and subdued’, and that Allah is everywhere. They denied that Allah is upon His Throne, as the people of truth affirm, and interpreted rising over it as exercising power. If matters were as they claimed, there would be no distinction between the Throne and the seventh earth, for Allah has power over everything. He has power over the earth, and over latrines and privies. If His being established over the Throne meant gaining dominion, it would be permissible to say that He is established over all things. Since no Muslim considers it permissible to say that Allah is established over all things, including latrines and privies, the interpretation of rising over the Throne as dominion—which encompasses all things—is invalid.”
More than one leading scholar among al-Ash‘arī’s followers has transmitted this from him, including Ibn Fūrak and the hadith master Ibn ‘Asākir, in the book he compiled entitled “Exposing the Slanderer’s Lies concerning What Is Attributed