The reply is:

As for your question, “How did He rise over the Throne?”—the question “how” does not apply to Allah Most High. He has told us that He

“rose over the Throne,”

but He has not told us how He rose over it. Since He did not tell them how that was, and their eyes did not see Him in this world so that they could describe Him according to what they had seen, and since they were forbidden to say about Him what they did not know, they believed His account of His rising over the Throne and entrusted the knowledge of how He rose over it to Allah Most High.

But you, O Jahmī, must say that Allah Most High is bounded and encompassed by places, since you claim that He is in places. For one cannot conceive of anything being in a place without that place encompassing it. Thus the Arabs say, “So-and-so is in the house,” and “The water is in the well”: the house encompasses that person, and the well encompasses the water.

An even more abhorrent consequence follows from your position, for you have said something more appalling than what the Christians asserted. They said, “Allah, Mighty and Majestic, is in Jesus,” and Jesus is the body of a single human being. They disbelieved by saying this, and they were told, “You have not revered Allah, since you have placed Him in Mary’s womb.”

Yet you say that He is in every place—in the wombs of all women, in the body of Jesus, and in the bodies of all people.

You must also say that He is inside dogs and pigs, for these are places, and according to you He is in every place. Exalted is Allah, far above that!

He said: When I exposed the repugnance of his position, he said, “I say that Allah is in every place, but not as a thing