the earth, roll up the heavens in His right hand, and then proclaim, “I am the King! Where are the kings of the earth?”
If, on the other hand, by “place” one means a purely negative, notional concept—what lies beyond the created universe in terms of exaltedness—then Allah is above the universe yet in no place in the concrete, positive sense, just as He was before He brought the creatures into existence.
Accordingly, whenever you hear or read one of the Imams or scholars attributing “place” to the Exalted, know that what is intended is this negative sense. They wish thereby to affirm His attribute of exaltedness and to rebut the Jahmiyyah and other negators who denied Him this attribute and then claimed that He is in every place in the positive sense. Al-‘Allamah Ibn al-Qayyim says in his Nuniyyah (2/446-447, published with the commentary Tawdih al-Maqasid, al-Maktab al-Islami):
Allah is the Greatest; manifestly nothing is above Him,
and Allah’s affair is of the loftiest affair.
Allah is the Greatest; His Throne has embraced the heavens,
the earth, and the Footstool with its pillars.
Likewise the Footstool, by clear proof,
contains the seven layered heavens and the earths.
Allah is above the Throne and the Footstool;
no thought of man is hidden from Him.
Do not confine Him to a place when you say,
“Our Lord is truly in every place.”
In your ignorance you removed Him from His Throne
only to restrict Him to some other place.
Do not negate His existence by saying,
“He is neither within us nor outside the universe.”
Allah is the Greatest! Your veils are rent asunder;
what is plain appears to whoever has two eyes.
Allah is the Greatest, far exalted above resemblance,
above likeness, and above the negation voiced by the denier.
Once you have grasped all that has preceded, you will—by Allah’s permission—readily understand from the Qur’anic verses, prophetic hadiths, and early reports cited by the author in this abridgement, that what they all point to is a well-known, firmly established meaning befitting Him: His exaltedness above His creation and His settling over the Throne in a manner commensurate with His Majesty, while He is at the same time in no direction and no place, for He is the Creator of all