he is told:

“This has no reality. It is like someone saying: ‘I affirm that He subsists in another without needing that locus, whose nature is to sustain whatever subsists in it, because His subsisting in another is unlike that of bodies and accidents. I affirm that He is in another, neither in contact with it nor distinct from it.’”

But this reply is valid from the people of the Sunnah, who deny the existence of a being that is neither distinct from the world nor within it.

As for someone who affirms this, he cannot refute the proponents of indwelling, for they say:

“Just as you affirm a being that is neither within the world nor outside it, affirm that He indwells in existing things without depending upon them.”

If he says, “This is inconceivable,” he is told:

“So is that. Indeed, the mind is more ready to accept the existence of a being within the world that does not depend upon it than to accept the existence of a being that is neither within the world nor distinct from it.”

This is why hearts are more readily drawn to the position of the proponents of indwelling than to that of those who deny both alternatives.

The majority of the Jahmiyyah, along with their devout worshippers and Sufis, actually profess indwelling. Otherwise, such sweeping negation is unacceptable to most minds; only certain of their speculative theologians profess it.

These theologians submit to those among the Jahmī proponents of indwelling who possess spiritual states, devotion, and spiritual knowledge. They cannot oppose them with a clear proof or effective authority. Rather, they either fall short in arguing against them or are overmatched by them in spiritual states, worship, and knowledge, for the latter have in their hearts devotion and spiritual fervor