Then came the so-called “Unionists” (al-Ittihādiyyah), who maintain that the existence of the Creator is identical to the existence of the creation. They declare, “He is now as He has always been; nothing accompanies Him.” In their view, the entities we observe are not “others” in relation to Him; there is no multiplicity in existence and no duality whatsoever. They coach their celebrated ascetic shaykhs to repeat, “Existence is one, and it is God; I see neither the One nor do I see God.” They go on to say, “The Qur’an and Sunnah speak in the language of duality, yet existence is one and admits no duality,” and other pronouncements that represent the gravest forms of unbelief and atheism. To that highly venerated shaykh, however, such words constitute the very perfection of tawḥīd. He even writes their substance on a sheet of paper and sends it to well-known scholars, who use it as an incantation over the sick.

We have already mentioned that al-Bukhārī recorded this ḥadīth in several places of his Ṣaḥīḥ. He cites it at the very beginning, in the Book of Knowledge, with the wording:

“There was God and nothing before Him; His Throne was upon the water; He wrote in the Record everything, and He created the heavens and the earth.”

In another place he relates it as:

“and there was nothing other than Him,”

and in a third place as:

“and there was nothing alongside Him.”

It is one ḥadīth, narrated in a single sitting. It therefore appears that the Prophet—may God bless him and grant him peace—uttered only one of these three expressions, while the other two were conveyed according to the narrators’ understanding. The wording that is unquestionably authentic from him is the one found in another ḥadīth: “and nothing was before Him.”

Thus, when it is reported, “nothing was with Him” or “nothing other than Him,” even though he also informed us that His Throne was upon the water, the intent is that nothing of the matter about which they were asking was with Him. They had inquired about the very beginning of creation, and the context of the ḥadīth indicates that