—a vast, open plain of the earth.”

A ring no larger than a single link of a mail-coif, tossed into an open wilderness—compared with the earth, that ring is nothing at all.

He then said, “And the superiority of the Throne over the Footstool is like the superiority of that open plain over this ring.” What, then, of the Creator—glorious and exalted! The Creator, magnified and sublime, cannot possibly be on the earth, for He is far too great to be contained by any of His creatures. Yet He says, “And He is with you wherever you may be” (al-Ḥadīd 4).

Know that the maʿiyyah—the “with-ness” Allah attributes to Himself—varies according to context and textual clues.

• At times it signifies His all-encompassing knowledge, power, dominion, governance, and the like, as in the verse just mentioned, “He is with you wherever you are,” and in His statement, “No private conversation of three takes place without Him being their fourth, nor of five without Him being their sixth; nor of fewer than that or more, but He is with them” (al-Mujādilah 7).

• At other times it conveys threat and warning, as in His words, “They seek to hide from people, yet they cannot hide from Allah; He is with them when they spend the night plotting words He does not approve. Allah encompasses what they do” (al-Nisāʾ 108). This is a warning and a threat to them, for they hatch statements displeasing to Him and conceal them from people, thinking that Allah does not know,