—nothing is beneath You.’

Then this heretic came along and interpreted Abu Saʿid’s words to mean that the creature is identical with the Creator. He said,

“Abu Saʿid is one of the faces of Truth, a tongue through which It speaks. On Its own behalf he declares that Allah is known only through His bringing together of opposites when they are predicated of Him: He is the First and the Last, the Manifest and the Hidden. Whatever appears is nothing but Him, and whatever is concealed is likewise Him in the very moment of His manifestation. No one sees Him but Himself, and none is veiled from Him except Himself. Thus He is manifest to Himself, hidden from Himself; He is the one called Abu Saʿid al-Kharraz and other names of created beings.”

For this reason some Christians said to those who utter such statements, repeat them from their shaykhs, and still claim to be Muslims: “You excommunicated us for saying, ‘God is the Messiah,’ yet your own shaykhs say, ‘God is Abu Saʿid al-Kharraz’—and the Messiah is better than Abu Saʿid!”

These people reply to the Christians in a way that shows they are even more extreme in their heresy than the Christians themselves. They say, “You restricted Him to the Messiah, whereas we say that He is the very existence of everything; we do not single out the Messiah.”

Because of such claims, someone once said to the most astute of them—the Tilmisani, known as al-ʿAfif—“You are a Nusayri.”