I say: This is a lie and a falsehood, and an attribution to the Wise Lawgiver of what His words cannot bear. For by this he is alluding to Allah’s words concerning the people of Paradise:

“Gardens of perpetual residence, which they will enter, adorned therein with bracelets of gold and pearls, and their garments therein will be silk. They will say, ‘All praise is due to Allah, who has removed all grief from us. Indeed, our Lord is surely All-Forgiving, Most Appreciative—He who, out of His bounty, has settled us in the Abode of Permanent Residence, where neither weariness nor fatigue will touch us.’”

Thus, as you can see, “the Abode of Permanent Residence” in the verse refers to Paradise, because whoever enters it remains there and never leaves it—not like Hell, for the monotheists will leave it, as is well known. Yet that fool broadened the meaning of this word, declaring it to mean the Hereafter, thereby including Hell as well. This is plainly false. He did so in order to include the life of the barzakh, paving the way for his citing the hadith—despite its being anomalous—as evidence for the soundness of the false hadith!

Al-Rāghib al-Aṣfahānī alluded to the meaning I have mentioned in his outstanding work, al-Mufradāt fī Gharīb al-Qurʾān (Vocabulary of the Qur’an’s Rare Words), where he says (418/2):

“Muqāmah means residence. Allah says: ‘He who, out of His bounty, has settled us in the Abode of Permanent Residence’—similar to ‘the Abode of Eternity’ and ‘Gardens of perpetual residence.’”

Qatādah said in his exegesis of the verse:

“They have taken up permanent residence, so they neither depart nor are caused to depart.” (1)

Thus, the word has a purely linguistic meaning in the Quran and hadith; it has no special meaning in the Sacred Law, as that fool alleged. Rather, it is the opposite of the meaning of relocation, which the hadith explicitly states in the words: “The desert-dweller relocates.” For this reason, Ibn al-Athīr said in Gharīb al-Ḥadīth (Rare Expressions in Hadith):