the falsity of their claimed lineage, just as they exposed the falsity of their doctrine. They also showed that its esoteric teachings constitute greater unbelief than the statements of the unbelievers among the People of the Book, or those of the extremists who claim that 'Alī was a prophet or divine, and others like them. For the substance of their doctrine is to deny the Creator, reject His messengers, deny the Last Day, and abolish His religion.

They described the ultimate aim of their mission in their al-Balāgh al-Akbar (The Greater Communication) and al-Nāmūs al-A'zam (The Supreme Law), explaining that the philosophers are the group closest to them. Yet they differed from the philosophers over affirming the Necessary Existent: the philosophers who affirm a divine principle acknowledge His existence, whereas these adherents of al-Balāgh al-Akbar and al-Nāmūs al-A'zam denied it, as did the naturalistic eternalists.

The doctrine of the proponents of the unity of existence, such as the author of al-Fusūs (The Bezels) and others like him, ultimately amounts to the doctrine of these people—the very doctrine to which Pharaoh gave expression. As for the Peripatetics—Aristotle and his followers, together with later thinkers who followed them, such as al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, and others like them—they acknowledge a First Cause distinct from the existence of the celestial spheres. However, the proof they advanced against the naturalists among the philosophers was either the argument from motion, employed by Aristotle and their early thinkers, or the argument from existence, employed by Ibn Sīnā and their later thinkers. It is a weak argument on their part, since it rests on the argument from composition, which is itself weak, as has been demonstrated elsewhere.