The hadith of the nightly descent is accepted as authentic, but the objection only works if Allah's "descent" is imagined like the movement of a body through space. That is precisely what the Quran and the scholars forbid us to assume.
The concern, stated as strongly as possible
The argument says: the Prophet (PBUH) taught that Allah descends to the lowest heaven when the last third of the night remains. Since the Earth rotates, the last third of the night is always happening somewhere. So, it seems Allah would be "descending" continuously, or descending and ascending every moment. And if He is established above the Throne, how can He also descend? What mechanism could this have for One who is not part of creation?
That is a fair question if "descent" means physical relocation, like a person going from one floor to another. But that is not how Allah's attributes are handled.
What the hadith actually asks us to affirm
Our Lord, Blessed and Exalted is He, descends every night to the lowest heaven when the last third of the night remains and says: "Who is calling upon Me, that I may answer him? Who is asking Me, that I may give him? Who is seeking My forgiveness, that I may forgive him?"
Sahih al-Bukhari 1145; also in Sahih Muslim
The hadith is about Allah's nearness, generosity, and special answering of supplication at a blessed time. It is not a physics lesson about motion, distance, velocity, or celestial mechanics.
The rule is given in the Quran:
There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the Hearing, the Seeing.
Quran 42:11
So we affirm what Allah and His Messenger affirmed, while denying resemblance to created things. Allah descends as He wills, in a manner befitting His majesty. We do not ask "how" in the sense of demanding a bodily mechanism, because that assumes He is contained by the same spatial limits as creation.
The rotating Earth does not create a contradiction
The last third of the night is relative to each people in their own place. When it is the last third of the night for a region, that time has the special virtue mentioned in the hadith. If that means this divine generosity is occurring for servants across the Earth successively, or even continuously from our time-bound perspective, there is no absurdity in that. Allah is not tired, divided, stretched across zones, or forced into repeated travel.
The mistake is to treat Allah's action as if it must follow the rules of created motion: first here, then not here, then there; occupying one place while vacating another. But Allah's being established above the Throne is also affirmed without likening it to a creature sitting, needing support, or being enclosed by a direction. Likewise, His descent is affirmed without imagining bodily transfer or the Throne becoming empty.
The Most Merciful rose over the Throne.
Quran 20:5
Classical scholars generally took one of two careful paths. Many affirmed the wording as it came, consigning the exact reality to Allah and rejecting any bodily meaning. Others explained it as the descent of His mercy, command, or a special angel, to protect ordinary believers from imagining physical movement. Both approaches agree on the main point: the hadith is true, and Allah is not like creation.
What the argument proves, and what it does not
It proves that a crude, physical picture of the hadith is wrong. It does not prove the hadith false. It does not prove that Allah is bound by Earth's rotation. It does not prove that divine descent must be like human descent. And it certainly does not cancel the practical meaning of the hadith: the last part of the night is a precious time to pray, repent, and ask.
The believer does not need to invent a mechanism for Allah. We know Him through revelation, not by reducing Him to the mechanics of created things. The safest answer is also the most dignified: He descends as He wills, not as bodies descend, and He answers those who call upon Him.