that Allah is above His creatures, exalted over them. Allah has made this innate to old women, children, and Bedouins in the elementary schools, just as He has made acknowledgment of the Creator, Most High, innate to them.

The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said in an authentic hadith:

“Every child is born upon the natural disposition. Then his parents make him a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian, just as an animal gives birth to an intact offspring: do you see any mutilation in it?”

Abū Hurayrah would then say: Recite, if you wish:

“The natural disposition Allah has instilled in mankind. There is no changing Allah’s creation.”

This is the meaning of the statement of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz:

Adhere to the religion of the Bedouins and the children in the elementary schools, and adhere to what Allah has made innate to them. For Allah has created His servants with a natural disposition toward the truth, and the messengers were sent to perfect and affirm that disposition, not to transform and alter it.

As for the enemies of the messengers, such as the Pharaonic Jahmiyyah and others like them, they seek to change the natural disposition Allah has instilled. They present people with specious arguments couched in ambiguous words; many people neither understand what they mean by them nor know how to answer them effectively. The root of their misguidance is their use of indeterminate terms that have no basis in His Book or the Sunnah of His Messenger and were never used by any of the leading Muslim scholars—terms such as occupying space, body, direction, and the like.

Whoever knows how to resolve their specious arguments should explain them. Whoever does not should turn away from their discourse and accept only what the Book and the Sunnah have brought, as He said:

“And when you see those who