The vision of God in the hereafter

"The vision is true for the people of Paradise — without encompassing and without modality"; he cites His word in Surat al-Qiyama ¹ (al-Qiyama 22 and al-Qiyama 23), and says its interpretation is "as God intended and knew it" ¹.

"All that has come on this of sound hadith from the Messenger is as he said, and its meaning as he intended; we do not enter into it interpreting with our opinions nor imagining with our desires" ^{1 2}.

He says: "None is safe in his religion except one who surrenders to God Almighty and to His messenger, and refers the knowledge of what is obscure to him to its knower"; "the foot of Islam stands only on the back of submission and surrender" ². Whoever seeks the knowledge of what has been barred from his knowing and is not content with submission — "his quest veils him from pure tawhid" ².

Belief in the vision is not valid, for him, for one who gauges it by imagination or interprets it by his own understanding, "since the interpretation of the vision — and of every meaning attributed to the Lordship — is abandoning interpretation and cleaving to submission; upon it is the religion of the Muslims" ^{2 3}.

Ibn Qudama says: "The believers will see their Lord in the hereafter with their eyes, will visit Him, and He speaks to them and they speak to Him" ⁴; he argues from al-Qiyama 22 and al-Qiyama 23, from al-Mutaffifin 15 on the veiling of the unbelievers, and from the hadith "You will see your Lord as you see this moon", saying: "this is a likeness of vision to vision, not of the seen to the seen" ⁴.

Ibn Taymiyya says: "Belief that the believers will see Him on the Day of Resurrection, plainly, with their eyes — as they see the sun in clear sky without clouds, and as they see the moon on a full-moon night without crowding in viewing it — they will see Him while in the Resurrection's plains, then see Him after entering Paradise as God wills" ⁵.

In "the account of the sum of the saying of the people of hadith and sunna" in Maqalat al-Islamiyyin, Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari presents what the people of hadith and sunna hold, ending: "And in all we have mentioned of their saying we speak, and to it we go" ⁶. He relates there that they "say: God will be seen by eyes on the Day of Resurrection, as the moon is seen on a full-moon night — the believers see Him and the unbelievers do not, for they are veiled from God" ⁷; and that Moses asked God for the vision in this world, and God informed him he will not see Him in this world but will in the hereafter ⁸.

This entry presents the positions of the 'Aqida al-Tahawiyya, Ibn Qudama's Lum'at al-I'tiqad, Ibn Taymiyya's al-Wasitiyya, and what al-Ash'ari related in Maqalat al-Islamiyyin of the people of hadith and sunna and declared his own — each attributed to its book. The sayings of the Maturidis and the remaining Sunni and non-Sunni schools from their own books have not yet been added; the entry needs specialist review before promotion.