this and approve of them, as when Abdullah ibn Rawāha, may Allah be pleased with him, recited to him:

I bear witness that Allah’s promise is true,
And that the Fire is the disbelievers’ abode;
That the Throne floats above the water,
And above the Throne is the Lord of all worlds;
It is borne by mighty angels—
Angels of God, bearing distinctive marks. (1)

This occurred in his well-known story, related by more than one scholar. After he had intercourse with his concubine and his wife saw him, she went at him to harm him, but he would not admit what he had done. She said, “Did not the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—say, ‘One who is in a state of major ritual impurity does not recite the Quran’?” He then recited these verses. She thought they were Quran and fell silent. The Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—was informed of this and approved of it.

The term “place” may also refer to that which surrounds a thing on every side. As for understanding “place” to mean merely the inner surface, or a substance that can never be perceived by the senses, this is the doctrine of these philosophers. I know of no Companion, Successor, or other leading Muslim scholar who intended this by the term “place.” The meaning Aristotle intended by the term “place” is an accident that actually exists, but this is not what Muslim scholars or ordinary Muslims mean by “place,” nor is it what the great majority of peoples—learned and common alike—mean by it. As for what Plato intended, most rational people deny that it has any existence in external reality. A full treatment of these matters belongs elsewhere.

Likewise, the interpenetration of bodies is a matter of well-known dispute among speculative thinkers. Al-Rāzī’s assertion concerning interpenetration—“That is impossible”—is itself a well-known point of contention. Yet no speculative thinker has said that a substance’s being in a spatial locus means interpenetration, whether the spatial locus is interpreted