Discussion of the attribute of elevation and rising above the Throne for Allah (Mighty and Majestic), and the refutation of those who interpret these attributes from among the people of innovation and desires.

The Shaykh : And ... the hadiths also confirm this meaning of affirming the absolute elevation of Allah (Mighty and Majestic), and the clearest ... is that the following was reported regarding this false interpretation: it is the hadith of Muslim in his Sahih, which is what came ... in a long hadith that I am not currently discussing. So he said to her: She said: In the sky. He said to her: She said: You are the Messenger of Allah. He said: So this is the testimony that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) bore for the girl, and she explicitly stated that Allah is in the sky. The scholars of kalam (theology) rejected this explicit statement and interpreted it, and this rejection and refusal led them to interpret the verses of Allah and the hadiths of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) other than their intended meaning ... Indeed, these people who interpret these noble verses, and I was finally forced to say that Allah is neither above nor below, and so on, only say that because they imagine that if we affirm the attribute of being above for Allah (Mighty and Majestic), we have confined Him to a place. And this is pure delusion, and it is ... Lord of the worlds, above ... and above Him ... They thought that if we say Allah (Mighty and Majestic) is in the sky, He is on the Throne, having risen above it according to the apparent meaning of His saying, Blessed and Exalted is He, that we have made Him like we made the shaykh on his chair or the king on his throne. So if the chair were pulled from under the shaykh or the throne from under the king, each of them would fall on his head. They imagined all of this regarding the Lord of the worlds, the One who is free from all creation ... It is that they imagined that what is above the creation is a place, whereas the truth is that there is no place above the creation. And as I said to one of the shaykhs of al-Azhar about two years ago, and we were in Mina.

The questioner : ... .