their very referents should not be dismissed on the grounds of the Sacred Law. Hence, should anyone reject these terms, he must first be asked what he means by them, for the discussion turns on intelligible concepts, not on the bare words themselves.
It is therefore said: What do you intend when you claim that whatever can be seen must be mutaḥayyiz—occupying space? In the Arabic in which the Qur’an was revealed, a mutaḥayyiz is something enclosed by something else, as in His words: “or withdrawing to a party” (Q 8:16). Here the withdrawal is a real, tangible movement whereby one existent is surrounded by another; it is called mutaḥayyiz because one group detaches itself from another. The speculative theologians, however, use mutaḥayyiz for whatever “occupies a ḥayyiz,” while the ḥayyiz, in their technical usage, is merely a posited locus and not a real entity. Thus, for them the universe is mutaḥayyiz although it is not in any existent ḥayyiz, whereas most of them still regard “place” (makān) as something real.
If, then, by mutaḥayyiz you mean that which is contained in a real, existing place, I deny your initial premise—“Every visible thing is mutaḥayyiz”—for the outer surface of the cosmos can be seen even though it is not inside some further world. Should you reply, “I only mean that it must be in a ḥayyiz, even if that ḥayyiz is non-existent,” we say: non-existence is nothing. To locate something in a non-existent ḥayyiz is not to locate it in anything real. It is known that nothing exists save the Creator and creation; so if the Creator is wholly separate from the created order, He is in no existent thing. And if someone maintains that He is in a non-existent ḥayyiz, the reality is simply that He is in nothing at all—so on what grounds do you declare this impossible?
The same ambiguity arises when it is alleged that visibility would require Him to be a body; the point will be clarified shortly. Likewise, consider the claim that He must be “in a direction.” The word “direction” may denote either something real or something privative. If one stipulates that the object of vision must be in a real direction, this is disproved by our seeing the surface of the universe. If, instead, non-being is treated as a “direction,” we reply: since He is apart from the world and nothing else is with Him there, He is in no existent direction. If you choose to label that privative realm a “direction” and then assert on that basis that He is “in a direction,” I deny that the consequent has in fact been negated; indeed, both reason and revelation attest to the truth of the consequent, not to its negation.