So he was asked, “If being is truly one, why is my mother forbidden to me while my wife is lawful?”

He answered, “To us, everything is lawful. It is only these veiled people who said, ‘It is forbidden,’ so we said, ‘Forbidden—for you.’ ”

All of their discourse is self-contradictory; each part overturns the other. His words “these veiled ones” and “we said, ‘Forbidden—for you’ ” necessarily draw a distinction between him and the veiled ones, and between speaker and audience—something that clashes with wahdat al-wujūd (the oneness of existence).

And when they say, “These are manifestations of the Real and arenas of His self-disclosure,” then, if the manifest object is other than the One manifested, and the locus of disclosure is other than the One who discloses Himself, plurality has been affirmed: in existence there are two, a manifest and the Manifested. But if they insist the two are one, their reply collapses entirely.