So, by Allah, nothing has shown them the immensity of what He has described of Himself, and of what His grasp encompasses, except their awareness of how small its counterpart in themselves is. This is what has been instilled in their minds, and He created their hearts with knowledge of it. Whatever Allah has described of Himself and named through His Messenger, we name as He has named it, without presuming to know anything beyond it. We do neither of these two things: we neither deny what He has described nor presume to know what He has not described.” End of quotation.
That being so, if created things are assumed to be like a ball, and this is how He grasps them and casts them, then what He has explained to us of His greatness is simply how created things stand in relation to Him, in terms whose counterpart we can understand from ourselves. Moreover, what is in the Quran and hadith makes clear that, if He wills, He grasps them and does with them what has been mentioned, as He will do on the Day of Resurrection; and if He wills, He does not do so. He is therefore able to grasp them and cast them like a ball. The encompassing of them that this entails is evident. If He wills, however, He does not do so. In every case, He is distinct from them, not co-located with them.
It is well known that any one of us—and to Allah belongs the highest example—who has a mustard seed may, if he wishes, grasp it so that his grasp encompasses it. If he wishes, he may leave it ungrasped and instead place it beneath him. In both cases, he is distinct from it. Likewise, whether the Throne is assumed to encompass created things—as a sphere encompasses what is within it—or is said to be above them without encompassing them, like the surface of the earth on which we stand in relation to its interior, or a dome in relation to what lies beneath it, or otherwise:
On either assumption, the Throne is above created things, and the Creator, glorified and exalted is He, is above it. When the servant turns towards Allah, he directs himself upwards, not downwards. This discussion is completed by explaining: