Moreover, their restriction of pleasure to intellectual pleasure is mistaken. The Christians went further, adding hearing and smell, saying that people will enjoy alluring fragrances and delightful melodies. Yet neither they nor the Jews affirmed eating, drinking, or sexual intercourse—the pleasure of touch. Muslims, however, affirmed every kind of pleasure—hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch—for both soul and body. This is true perfection, not what is affirmed by the People of the Book or by those worse than them among the esoteric philosophers.

The greatest pleasure of the Hereafter is the pleasure of looking upon Allah, glorified be He, as stated in the authentic hadith:

“He will have given them nothing dearer to them than looking upon Him.”

This is the fruit of knowing and worshipping Him in this world. The sweetest thing in this world is knowing Him, and the sweetest thing in the Hereafter is looking upon Him, glorified be He. Thus, His manifestation on Fridays in the Hereafter corresponds to one’s Friday prayer in this world.

Abū Hāmid and others like him mention “vision” in their books, describing it as the highest form of bliss. He speaks of the removal of the veils and of people seeing Allah’s Face. Yet by all this he means what the Jahmiyyah and the philosophers maintain, for “vision,” according to them, is nothing but knowledge. Just as a person may see something with his own eyes, while his imagination may represent it to him when it is absent, so too, they hold, is knowledge: in this world there is only a representation of knowledge, like a mental image in calculation, whereas in the Hereafter they will know Him without a representation. According to them, He is “an existence neither within the world nor outside it,” and “the lifting of the veil”