Machine summary:
1 Accordingly all the Muslim scholas• tic philosophers-both the Mu'tazilites,-a microscopic minority excepted, -and the Orthodox alike, have held1 that the Beatific Vision is the summum bonum of life under the Islamic dispensation, although they· have differed widely as to the nature of that vision.
To begin with, the Mu'tazilites are unanimous" on this, that God will not be seen with the physical eyes either in this world or in the next," as in their opinion.
In the opinion of the Mu'tazilites, since God as an object of vision does not satisfy the relevant conditions laid down above, He cannot be seen with bodily eyes.
Once the Mu'tazilites denied the corporeal vision of God, they had to explain away all such verses of the Qur'an as went against their con• tention.
(b) Marmaduke Pickthall, The Glorious Qur'Jn, I, 1 of the Divine Glory, in the opinion of the Mu'tazilites, the Orthodox assertion in favour of the possibility of the vision of God fails.
Now, the question of all questions for us is how to reconcile the view of Al-Ash'ari as adumbrated in his Ibana that God will be seen with physical eye-;-unconditionally in the next world with that as given above by Imam al-Haramain?
section of the Muslim scholastic philosophers has it1 " That the believers have a vision of God most High in Paradise and that He is seen, not in a place i:ior in a direction ~r by facing or the joining of gla.