but you say that these are letters and sounds He created in the air. You also say: ‘Letters and sounds cannot subsist in Him, because they can subsist only in something spatially located, whereas the Creator is not spatially located. Whoever says that He is spatially located has disbelieved.’

It is well known that someone who denies what the Book and Sunnah expressly state is more deserving of being judged an unbeliever than someone who affirms what the Book and Sunnah teach. If someone who denies the explicit texts of the Book and Sunnah claims that reason supports him, the one who adheres to those texts replies: ‘Rather, reason supports me and agrees with the Book and Sunnah.’ The latter thus claims the support of both revelation and reason, whereas the former supports his position only with what he claims to be rational evidence, whose unsoundness his opponent demonstrates.

Even supposing that reason were on his side, ‘disbelief’ is a judgment determined by Islamic law. Not everyone who contradicts something established through rational inquiry is an unbeliever. Even if someone were to deny some self-evident rational truths, he would not be judged an unbeliever unless his statement constituted disbelief according to Islamic law. As for someone who contradicts what is known to have been brought by the Messenger, he is an unbeliever without dispute.

Neither the Book and Sunnah nor the statements of any of this community’s early generations and leading scholars describe Allah as spatially located or as not spatially located. Nor do the Book and Sunnah state that whoever makes either assertion becomes an unbeliever. This is an innovated expression, and disbelief is not determined merely by innovated terms that have no basis in the Book and Sunnah. Rather, when someone says that Allah is spatially located or is not spatially located, he should be asked to clarify his meaning. If he says: ‘By saying that He is spatially located, I mean