What they call “the Realized One” is, in their view, the person who has reached the ultimate limit, and they claim that this is the very kernel of what the prophets proclaimed and of what the ancient philosophers upheld. For that reason Ibn Sabʿīn begins al-Ijābah by saying, “I have resolved to unveil the secret of the wisdom to which the Hermes of the primordial ages alluded, and to clarify the knowledge that prophetic guidance sought to convey.” He, Ibn Arabi, and others like them structure their summons in the same manner as the Bāṭinite Shīʿite unbelievers. At the outset their doctrine is the ordinary Shīʿite creed; next they move the one who answers them to full-blown Rāfiḍism, then they lead him to abandon religious works, then to shed the particularities of Islam, and then to divest himself of every religion until, according to them, he reaches “the Greatest Declaration” and “the Supreme Law,” whereupon he becomes a sheer negationist. They even say, “There is no difference between us and the philosophers except over affirming Existence”—meaning the Creator of the universe; if the philosophers would relinquish that affirmation, no dispute would remain between us and them. This, in truth, is the farthest reach of those atheists’ call.

Several forces feed their misguidance. Among them is their belief that the messengers’ words possess an inner meaning that contradicts the outward sense. Another is the perplexity and turmoil they experienced in trying to grasp what the messengers brought. Yet another is their observation that the path pursued by the scholastic theologians yields no benefit.