The position of those who deny both Allah’s separateness from creation and His being within it is, in reality, a denial of two mutually contradictory alternatives. It is like the statement of the Qarmatians, who say: “He is neither alive nor dead, neither knowing nor ignorant, neither capable nor incapable.” Their position is therefore more irrational than that of someone who believes in neither Muhammad nor Musaylima. Both positions are false, but reason perceives the falsity of denying both sides of a contradiction—or two alternatives equivalent to them—more plainly than it recognizes the prophethood of one of Allah’s messengers, may Allah bless them all. Thus, you will scarcely find anyone who denies both separateness and being within creation, or who withholds judgment regarding separateness, able to refute the proponents of indwelling and union in a way that invalidates their position. Rather, whatever argument he advances against them, they counter with a similar one, and their argument is stronger than his.

If he says to them, “Indwelling is conceivable only as an accident inhering in a subject, in which case what inheres depends upon the subject in which it inheres,” or advances a stronger argument used against them by the leading scholars, saying, “If He were indwelling, there would necessarily be either separation or contact, for when something subsisting in itself dwells within something else subsisting in itself, one of these two alternatives must obtain,” they reply to those who deny these attributes: “That is so only if what indwells occupies space or subsists in something that occupies space.”

Or they say: “This is what is conceivable regarding the indwelling of bodies and their accidents. But if we posit an existent that subsists in itself, is not a body, and does not occupy space, it would not be impossible for it to indwell without depending upon the subject in which it dwells, and without either contact or separation.”