Place and Direction (al-Makān wa-l-Jihah): What Is Affirmed and What Is Denied

“Above means a body in a direction”

The response

The claim treats “above the world” as if it meant inside something. Above all created things there is no created thing that surrounds Him; the meaning denied — being encompassed and being in need — is denied by Ahl al-Sunnah as well. What remains is what the texts state: that He is above His creation.

The denial is stated openly in their own books. Al-Sanūsī listed “being in a direction” among the things impossible for Allah, and his commentator drew the conclusion himself: so it is not said that He is above the Throne. The word “direction” was introduced in order to deny the Highness that the Qurʾān states.

The imams of the Najdī daʿwah said, in an answer preserved in al-Durar al-Saniyyah:

“Hands are raised only because the heaven is the qiblah of supplication”

The response

The direction of prayer was fixed by a command, and it was changed by a command; raising the heart and the hands to the heaven was never taught by a command and has never changed. Al-Dārimī and Ibn Qutaybah point to the disposition that precedes any teaching: children raise their hands to the heaven, and hearts rise to Him in distress. The Prophet ﷺ asked “Where is Allah?” and accepted “In the heaven” — he did not ask about the qiblah of supplication.

“Allah is not in a place; He is as He always was”

The response

This sentence has a known origin, and it is not the Salaf. Al-Ashʿarī himself recorded in Maqālāt al-Islāmiyyīn that the Muʿtazilah differed over place. The majority of them said that Allah is in every place in the sense of governing it. And some of them, Hishām al-Fuwaṭī, ʿAbbād ibn Sulaymān and Abū Zufar, said: the Creator is not in a place; He is as He always was. In the same breath he recorded that the Muʿtazilah interpreted “al-Raḥmān rose over the Throne” as “He conquered”.

Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī said in Maqālāt al-Islāmiyyīn, ed. Ritter:

So the slogan that the later schools teach as the creed of Ahl al-Sunnah is, word for word, the slogan of a faction of the Muʿtazilah, recorded by the founder of the Ashʿarī school as a Muʿtazilī saying. The interpretation of istiwāʾ that they teach with it is, word for word, the interpretation that he recorded as the Muʿtazilah's. They took the creed of the Muʿtazilah on the Highness, kept it, and put the name of al-Ashʿarī on it.

And the phrase “He is as He was before place” proves nothing. Before creation there was nothing besides Allah, so there was nothing for Him to be above. When He created the creation, He created it distinct from Himself, outside His Essence, and He rose over the Throne. The texts state His Highness after the creation, and no one can cancel what the Qurʾān says about the present by imagining what was before the creation existed.

“Where was Allah before creation?”

The response

The question is empty. “Where” asks for the position of one thing relative to another. Before creation there was nothing besides Allah, as the Prophet ﷺ said: Allah was, and there was nothing before Him. Asking where He was then is asking for a relation to things that did not exist, like asking what colour a sound is.

Al-Bukhārī reported in his Ṣaḥīḥ:

The question that does have an answer is the one the deniers avoid: now that the creation exists, is Allah inside it or outside it? Ask the denier: is Allah inside you or outside you? If he says inside, he has said what no Muslim says. If he says outside, he has affirmed that Allah is distinct from His creation, and the outside of everything created is above it. If he says neither, he has described the non-existent, as Ibn Taymiyyah said.

Then ask him about the Night Journey. The Prophet ﷺ was taken up from heaven to heaven until he reached the place where he heard the scratching of the pens, and he went back and forth between Mūsā and his Lord over the number of the prayers. If Allah has no direction and is not above, where was the Prophet ﷺ going, and why was the ascent upward?

al-Rāzī: “If He were upon the Throne, the Throne would have been created first”

The response

Ibn Taymiyyah answered this in Bayān Talbīs al-Jahmiyyah, and opened his answer with a judgement on the man: this one and his like bring no argument except that it turns against them. So it is here, and the answer has four parts.

First: the argument helps his opponents. He says that if Allah were above the Throne, the Throne would have been created first. That is exactly what happened. So by his own reasoning, the order of creation supports the Highness.

Second: his claim that the heavens were created before the Throne has no basis. No one among the earlier or later scholars said it. The verse says that Allah rose over the Throne after creating the heavens and the earth; it does not say that He created the Throne then. Where in the verse is “then He created the Throne”? If the Throne had been created at that time, its creation would have been mentioned before the rising over it.

Third: the Qurʾān and the Sunnah state the opposite. Allah said: He created the heavens and the earth in six days, and His Throne was upon the water. The Throne was there while the heavens and the earth were being created. And the Prophet ﷺ answered the people of Yemen: Allah was, and there was nothing before Him, and His Throne was upon the water; then He created the heavens and the earth. Al-Bukhārī put this ḥadīth under the chapter of the Throne in Kitāb al-Tawḥīd.

Allah, the Exalted, said:

Allah, the Exalted, said:

Fourth: even if it were supposed that the Throne was created after the heavens, nothing would prevent Allah from being above it. Allah created the earth, and then directed Himself to the heaven and made it seven heavens above it. What is created later can be above what was created earlier. So al-Rāzī's argument fails on every assumption, and on the true assumption it proves the opposite of what he wanted.

Allah, the Exalted, said:

“I disbelieve in a Lord who moves from His place”

The response

Al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ gave the answer that every Sunnī should keep ready: if a Jahmī says to you, I disbelieve in a Lord who leaves His place, then say: I believe in a Lord who does what He wills. The Jahmī declares disbelief in a Lord he has imagined by likening Him to bodies. The Sunnī believes in the Lord the texts describe, who descends and comes as He wills, without the Jahmī's likening.

Al-Bukhārī said in Khalq Afʿāl al-ʿIbād:

Imām Aḥmad turned the argument of the Jahmiyyah back on them. You have uttered a tremendous lie against Allah when you claimed that He does not speak; you have likened Him to the idols, for the idols do not speak, do not move, and do not pass from place to place. The Jahmī flees from what he calls likening Allah to the living, and lands in likening Him to the dead stones that the mushrikūn worshipped. The deficiency Allah used to show the falsehood of idols, the Jahmī made a description of the Lord of the worlds.

Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal said in al-Radd ʿalā al-Jahmiyyah wa-l-Zanādiqah, ed. Ṣabrī:

“Whoever affirms direction is a mujassim”

The response

Ibn Taymiyyah showed where this name-calling comes from and where it ends. Everyone who denies anything of the attributes calls the one who affirms it a mujassim. The Muʿtazilah called the Ṣifātiyyah — everyone who says that Allah is Knowing with knowledge, Powerful with power, Hearing with hearing — mujassimah, mushabbihah and ḥashwiyyah. And the Ṣifātiyyah, he said, include the Ashʿariyyah themselves.

Ibn Taymiyyah said in Majmūʿ al-Fatāwā:

The Muʿtazilah used the very argument against the Ashʿarīs that the Ashʿarīs use against Ahl al-Sunnah: life, power and speech are accidents, accidents subsist only in bodies, so whoever affirms them is a mujassim; and whoever says Allah is seen has affirmed a direction, and that is tajsīm. The Ashʿarī answers the Muʿtazilī: I affirm the attributes and do not call them accidents. Ahl al-Sunnah answer the Ashʿarī with the same words: we affirm the Highness and do not accept your word “body”. If the Ashʿarī's answer is sound, so is ours; if ours is not, neither is his.

The Ashʿarī who calls the Ḥanbalī a mujassim for affirming the Highness has picked up a weapon that the Muʿtazilah forged against himself. He holds it by the blade.