and He created the jinn from a smokeless flame of fire.

How, then, can anyone claim otherwise when it is firmly established by the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and the unanimous agreement of the early generations—about which no disagreement is known—that when Allah created the heavens, the earth, and everything between them in six days, His Throne was upon the water before that? The Throne therefore existed before them, and the water existed before them.

Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim records, on the authority of ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr, that the Prophet ﷺ said:

“Allah ordained the destinies of all creatures fifty thousand years before He created the heavens and the earth, and His Throne was upon the water.” (1)

The Exalted also says: “Then He turned to the heaven while it was smoke and said to it and to the earth, ‘Come, both of you, willingly or unwillingly.’ They said, ‘We come willingly.’” (2)

It is authentically reported from several Companions, Successors, and other Muslim scholars that He created the heaven from the vapor of water. Such narrations are confirmed by what the People of the Book relate from the Torah and from the knowledge they have inherited from the prophets. The testimony of the People of the Book that accords with the Qur’an or the Sunnah is acceptable, as in His statement: “Say: Allah is sufficient as a Witness between me and you, and so too those who possess knowledge of the Scripture.” (3) The Qur’an contains other passages to the same effect.

On this point two groups have gone astray.

One group of speculative theologians—among Jews, Muslims, and others—imagined that Allah’s declaration that He created the heavens and the earth and what lies between them implies that they were brought into being out of nothing and that nothing existed before them except Allah.

Yet it is clear that Allah’s own revelation contradicts this, for He has explicitly stated that He fashioned humankind and the jinn from substances He Himself named; and those among them who uphold the doctrine of indivisible atoms maintain that the creation of the human being, and of other entities that He brings into existence—