He spoke about the false interpretation of the attribute of elevation (that Allah is in the sky).

The Shaykh: Know that it is the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) who established for us, the Muslims who follow the Book and the Sunnah and the methodology of the righteous predecessors, the practice of asking those in whose faith in Allah (Mighty and Majestic) we have doubt, "Where is Allah?" And he established that the answer should be, "Allah is in the sky." However, this necessarily requires some clarification, which I will provide, if Allah wills, after I remind our brothers and sisters listeners of a hadith that the Imams have included in their books, and upon whose authenticity the scholars of hadith, scholars of tafsir, the jurists of the four schools, and others have agreed. It was narrated by Imam Muslim in his Sahih, before him by Imam Malik in his Muwatta, after him by Imam Ahmad in his Musnad, and by many, many others who followed them with excellence. This hadith is what was reported with a sound chain from Mu'awiyah ibn al-Hakam al-Sulami (may Allah be pleased with him) that he prayed one day behind the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). A man beside him sneezed, and the man said to him while he was praying, "May Allah have mercy on you." They looked at him with the corners of their eyes, silencing him. But it seems he was a recent convert to Islam, new to knowing the rulings related to prayer. So he was distressed when he saw them looking at him with a look of doubt. He said, raising his voice, "What is wrong with you that you are looking at me?" They began hitting their thighs, also continuing to silence him. At that point, it seemed he realized he was in error, and he remembered the guidance and gentleness of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) toward him. He said: "When the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) finished the prayer, he turned to me. By Allah, he did not humiliate me, nor did he make me feel bad, nor did he hit me, nor did he mock me. He only said to me: When this man found this gentleness, and everything from its source is beautiful, it is He who described him in the Noble Qur'an When he found this gentleness in teaching, he hoped to increase in knowledge after he knew that he had made a mistake in prayer and spoken, and it is not permissible for him to speak. So he said to him: "O Messenger of Allah, some of us take omens." He said: He said: "Some of us visit fortune-tellers." He said: He said: "Some of us draw lines in the sand." Drawing lines in the sand is known to this day, unfortunately. He (may the prayer and peace of Allah be upon him) said: He said: "O Messenger of Allah, and the witness now comes, and what has passed requires a lecture, or more than a lecture. The witness now is what follows." He said: "O Messenger of Allah, I have a slave girl who tends my sheep in one of the valleys. One day, a wolf attacked my sheep, and I am a man who gets angry as humans do, so I struck her a blow, and upon me is the expiation of freeing a slave." He (may the prayer and peace of Allah be upon him) said: When she came, he (may the prayer and peace of Allah be upon him) said to her: She said: "In the sky." He said to her: She said: "You are the Messenger of Allah." He said to her master: The scholars of the Muslims, despite their different specializations—scholars of hadith, which is their specialty, scholars of tafsir, scholars of fiqh, and scholars of tawhid—all agreed on the authenticity of this hadith, except the scholars of kalam who ride on their heads and follow their desires. They are the ones who reject this hadith with their minds, the minds that you know have no value. This hadith established for us that it is permissible for us to ask the Ahbash and their like, the tails of the Mu'tazilah or the Ibadis, "Where is Allah?" So you see them confused, and the bold among them say: "This is a question that is not permissible." And they are ignorant that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is the one who established this question for his Ummah. So they are rejecting their Prophet, whom they claim to believe in. Then the answer from the slave girl was, "Allah is in the sky." You may not believe it, but the book is available. Some scholars in the present age say that the statement that Allah is in the sky is the belief of the pre-Islamic age of ignorance and not the belief of the Muslims, and that this phrase, "Allah is in the sky," was reported by the Lord of the Worlds about them in the Noble Qur'an. And Allah, as you know, in the Surah Tabaarak There is another group closer to guidance and further from the misguidance of the first group, who said that the statement that Allah is in the sky is the statement of the pre-Islamic age of ignorance. They interpret this verse with an interpretation, saying: meaning the angels. And this is from the ill omen of what they call metaphor. They take the paths of metaphor to deny the divine attributes. Here come many hadiths to refute this interpretation. Among them is the hadith circulated among people today, but most people do not know, or do not understand, what they are speaking of. That hadith is Who is in the sky is Allah! Who is on the earth is the creation of Allah, from human to animal to beasts, and so on. This hadith clarifies the intended meaning of the saying of the Exalted, "in the sky": And this is what I mentioned earlier; perhaps we will turn to clarifying the meaning of "in the sky," because "in" in terms of Arabic usage sometimes comes with the meaning of location, and sometimes comes with another meaning from the prepositions, coming to mean So do you think "in" here in this verse is in the usual meaning? That is, is it a location? The answer is no. And from here, the scholars of kalam think that if they deny that Allah is in the sky, they have purified Him. In reality, they are [purifying Him] from their wrong understanding of the verse. But they denied saying what Allah said: "Allah is in the sky." They were ignorant of the meaning that Allah is in the sky, meaning above the sky. And in that, or in this case, the meaning of this verse meets the explanation by the previous hadith Who is on the earth; the intended meaning is not who is inside the earth, from worms and insects, and so on, but the meaning is very clear: who is on the earth, whom you deal with, from your own kind, from humans, or from the animals that Allah has made submissive to you. That is, who is above the sky. At that point, this interpretation, which this hadith clarifies, meets exactly with all the verses we mentioned some of, and other hadiths, that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) has the attribute of elevation. So when we direct the question to these Ahbash or others who are of their type in their misguidance, "Where is Allah?" their answer must be as the slave girl said: "Allah is in the sky." But not in their concept of location, no, but in the concept clarified by the hadith, first, and which our righteous predecessors were upon, second. That is, Allah is in the sky, meaning above the sky, meaning above the Throne, because everything that is above you is a sky. At that point, all paths are blocked before these Ahbash who think, first, that it is not permissible for a Muslim to ask "Where is Allah?" and second, that it is not permissible to say "Allah is in the sky," after it has become clear to them that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is the one who established this question, and he is and he is the one who testified to that slave girl's faith when she spoke with the phrase of the Qur'an, "Allah is in the sky." And here is a lesson that I must mention, and it is that the difference becomes clear to us between the life that the general Muslims lived in the time of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), even the slave girl tending the sheep, and what the general Muslims live today, and many of their special ones. Because if this question were directed to many of the special ones, including some of the great scholars of Al-Azhar, who is described and it is said "the Noble Al-Azhar," if this question, "Where is Allah?" were directed to them, they would not answer with the answer of the slave girl. What is this difference! Between the great scholars of the present age who do not answer with the answer of the Messenger to the question of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), while the sheep girl knows the correct answer to this sound question. I say this is proof that the Muslims in the first era were all raised, no difference between their special ones and their general ones, they were all raised with the upbringing of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) regarding at least the creed that every Muslim must understand first, then believe in. How did this slave girl know the correct creed? The answer is that we do not imagine that the slave girl was able to attend the circles of knowledge that the great Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and their special ones attended, while the others did not attend the sessions of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). If 'Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him), when a hadith was reported to him from Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), regretted and said: "The clapping in the markets occupied us," if this is 'Umar, what do we say about the other Companions? And what do we say about the women? And finally, what do we say about the slave girls and the sheep girl? I want from this introduction to know how this slave girl understood this correct creed that some of the special ones from the people of knowledge have not understood to this day. She was living in an atmosphere, meaning unified in the correct tawhid, with no like in the world at all, because of the presence of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), because of the presence of the light among those Companions, from men and women, from the special and the general. This slave girl received this creed from her master, and her master hears the correct creed, and the legal rulings, from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and he does not limit himself to keeping it, but he transfers it to those he supports, to whom he provides material sustenance and also knowledge and meaning. From here we know why the slave girl knew this correct creed, because she lived in that unique atmosphere in understanding the correct tawhid. But today, the Muslims live in varied atmospheres, in creeds that are scattered and contradictory, the most contradictory. And so there is no salvation for the Muslims in this time except that they return to what the righteous predecessors were upon, and that they realize in themselves the news of their Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) when he described the saved group, saying: It is the one that is I wanted to end the speech with this hadith, but I remembered that in the question posed earlier, these Ahbash deny, among what they deny, the hand by which Allah (Mighty and Majestic) described Himself. They say the hand is a limb. Glory be to Allah, and they are speaking about themselves, so how do they say about the hand that Allah mentioned that it is a limb! These are among the most ignorant of people, if not among the most misguided. That is because they measure the unseen by the seen, or rather they measure the unseen of the unseen, which is Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He), by themselves. This is the extreme of foolishness, if not the extreme of misguidance. We follow them in argument, not in creed, and far be it that we participate with them in their creed. We say to them: Is Allah a Self possessed of attributes of perfection? Do you say with us? They must say with us, yes, or say no. If they say no, then that is what indicates their misguidance and confirms what they are in, so we have no speech with them, because the speech at that point would be with the Zindiqs. And it is assumed now that we are speaking with Muslims who testify that there is no god but Allah and pray, and so on. If they say we are with you that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) is a Self with all attributes of perfection, if they say this word, they have contradicted themselves when they said Allah is a Self and has attributes, and you, the speaker with the words of the scholars of kalam, when you say the hand is a limb, this is a limb for your Self. Is your Self like the Self of Allah, or is the Self of Allah like your Self? You will say, far be it from Allah, His Self is not like the Selves. And thus His attributes are not like the attributes of the created things. If the problem ends, my brothers, the problem ends. What is said in the Self is said in the attributes, and what is said in the attributes is said in the Self, affirmatively and negatively. Allah is a Self with all attributes of perfection and purified from all attributes of deficiency. That is the saying of the Exalted: So He is Hearing and Seeing. Truth is from Allah, but His hearing is not like our hearing, His seeing is not like our seeing. These arguers with falsehood, who hide behind words that appear true on the surface but are false in reality, these must deny all attributes of Allah (Mighty and Majestic). Why? Because describing Allah with these attributes mostly involves a verbal sharing that is not a real meaning. Allah (Mighty and Majestic) said about Adam: And He described Himself as Hearing and Seeing. If the time ends, if we end this speech, we say: If Allah (Mighty and Majestic) said: And described Adam (peace be upon him) as making him Hearing and Seeing, then according to the way of these Ahbash and their like from the deniers, one of two things must be said: either we say that Allah is not as He said: Because He said about Adam: Or we say that He is not as He described Himself, but His saying about Adam: is not so. So one of the two descriptions must be denied, either what is related to Allah (Mighty and Majestic), and this is disbelief, or what is related to the description of Allah for Adam (peace be upon him) as making him Hearing and Seeing, and denying this is also disbelief. So they are revolving between disbelief and disbelief. And that is the consequence of one who does not follow the righteous predecessors. And so it was said:
All good lies in following those who came before, and all evil lies in the innovation of those who came after.
So we advise all those present not to listen to the scholars of *kalam* (speculative theology) or their followers, and they should know the creed of the Salaf (the earliest generations) so that, if Allah wills, they will be guided, and praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds.