I have a question regarding the soundness of the belief that Allah is present everywhere. I have asked this question to many scholars, but their answers differed substantially from one another. In fact, the differences have been so significant that some of them have regarded this question as something that could undermine the religion and its fundamental beliefs.
May Allah reward you with all good on our behalf.
In The Name Of Allah The Most Gracious The Most Merciful, and may peace and blessings be upon the best of messengers, Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, the truthful, the trustworthy, who fulfilled his promises.
Dear brother,
All religious matters, especially issues of Aqidah, are Tawqifi, meaning they are restricted to what has been established by Quran and Sunnah. In other words, speaking about these matters must be based solely on the evidence found in Quran and Sunnah.
Accordingly, discussing these matters without relying on revelation is speaking about Allah without knowledge, which is considered one of the major sins in Islam.
There are many Ayat in Quran and narrations in Sunnah that answer this question. To keep my response brief, I will mention only the following:
- Allah says:
﴾ Do you feel secure that He, Who is over the heaven (Allah), will not cause the earth to sink with you ﴿
- The prophet PBUH said:
(( Be merciful on the earth, and you will be shown mercy from Who is above the heavens ))
- The prophet PBUH said:
(( Don't you trust me though I am the truth worthy man of the One in the Heavens, and I receive the news of Heaven (i.e. Divine Inspiration) both in the morning and in the evening? ))
- The prophet PPBUH said:
(( Mu'awiya b. al-Hakam told that he went to God’s Messenger and said: “I had a slave girl who was herding sheep of mine in the direction of Uhud and al-Jawwaniya. One day I looked and saw that a wolf had gone off with one of our sheep. Now I am a man who becomes annoyed just as others do, but I gave her a blow and then went to God’s Messenger. He treated my offence as serious, and so I asked him whether I should set her free. He told me to bring her and when I did so he asked her where God was and she replied that He was in heaven. He asked her who he was and she replied that he was God’s Messenger. He then told me to set her free, for she was a believer. ))
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The prophet PBUH said: (( By Him in Whose Hand is my life, when a man calls his wife to his bed, and she does not respond, the One Who is in the heaven is displeased with her until he (her husband) is pleased with her. ))
The preferences of human reason, the speculations of philosophy, and the conventions of language can never have authority over the evidence we found in Quran and Sunnah.
