The point here is that His being above all is one of His inseparable attributes of praise. He can therefore never be described by the opposite of being on high.

For this reason, the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said in the authentic hadith:

“You are the First, and nothing is before You; You are the Last, and nothing is after You; You are the Most High, and nothing is above You; You are the Most Near, and nothing is nearer than You.”

He did not say “beneath You.” We have discussed this hadith elsewhere.

That being so, those who oppose the Book, the Sunnah, and the way of the early generations do not affirm that He is on high to the exclusion of being below. Rather, they either describe Him as being both above and below, or in terms that necessarily entail this, or they deny that He is either above or below. They fall into two groups.

The Jahmiyyah, who say that He Himself is in every place, or that He is neither within the world nor outside it, do not describe Him as being on high to the exclusion of being below. For if He is in a place, places include both high and low ones: in a high place He would be high, and in a low place He would be low. Indeed, when they say that He is in every place, making all places locations in which He resides—containers and vessels—they have in reality made those places higher than Him. For a location encompasses what resides in it, and a container or vessel encompasses its contents; that which encompasses is above what it encompasses.

When the early generations, the imams, and all the other scholars of the Sunnah say, “He is above the Throne