‘Arafah” is only for His believing servants who make pilgrimage to Him; and just as, when Ramadan begins, the gates of Paradise are opened for His believing servants who fast Ramadan, the gates of Hell are closed to them, and their devils are chained. “As for the disbelievers”—those who consider it lawful not to fast during Ramadan and recognize neither its sanctity nor its special merit—the gates of Paradise are not opened for them during it, the gates of Hell are not closed to them, and their devils are not chained.

The purpose here is not to elaborate on this matter. Rather, the point is that if the descent is exclusive to the believers, then they, all praise belongs to Allah, extend from the farthest east to the farthest west. If it is universal, the argument is stronger still. In either case, the divine descent to the people of each land must continue for one sixth of the time or more. If it is said that their summer nights are short, the reply is that their winter nights are long: the one offsets the other, and whatever is lost from their summer nights is added to their winter nights. Hence the report:

“Winter is the believer’s spring: he fasts its days and spends its nights in prayer.”

This being so, if the descent were as some ignorant people imagine—that He comes to be beneath the heavens, above the lowest heaven, and beneath the Throne for a third of the night in each land—it would not merely follow that He remains beneath the Throne and beneath the heavens at all times. For that alone would be the necessary consequence only if all the inhabitants of each sixth of the inhabited world shared the same third of the night, making six thirds altogether. If He were then assumed to remain over these people for one third, then over those others for one third, it would follow that He remains at all times beneath the Throne, or beneath the heavens, or wherever the ignorant person imagines Allah to be confined, and thus is never above the Throne.