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Is the statement of Ibn Taymiyyah that Allah is a beardless youth true?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

What is attributed to Ibn Taymiyyah - may Allah have mercy on him - regarding seeing Allah in this world is incorrect, and his statements in his books deny that. It is established that the Prophet - peace be upon him - saw Jibreel on a chair between the sky and the earth, and not his Lord. Any hadith that mentions the Prophet seeing his Lord with his eyes on earth, or Allah descending to earth, or His stepping on the rock of Jerusalem, is a false lie by the consensus of the people of knowledge. The claim of seeing Allah with the eye before death is false by the consensus of Ahl as-Sunnah wa al-Jama'ah, for the believers will not see their Lord until they die. Seeing Allah in a dream is possible, and it is according to the faith of the one who sees the dream. As for seeing Allah with the eye while awake in this world, it is a delusion, and whoever claims to see Him in specific forms, his delusion and disbelief are great. Seeing Allah with the eyes will be for the believers in Paradise and in the plains of resurrection, and this is what the hadiths have affirmed consecutively and what the Salaf and the Imams have accepted. As for the hadiths that describe the Prophet seeing his Lord in specific forms (such as a beardless youth), they are denounced or fabricated. The religion of Allah is a middle ground between the denial of the Jahmiyyah regarding seeing Allah in the afterlife and the affirmation of the extremists regarding seeing Him in this world.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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