says that Allah’s essence has no end. But if they say that His essence may neither be believed nor said to be finite or infinite, because it cannot be described in either way, then this is precisely the description of what is nonexistent. Thus, one of two conclusions is unavoidable: either they liken their Lord to what is nonexistent, or they affirm dimensions without end.

This is what the early generations used to say about the Jahmiyyah’s position: when they said that Allah is not upon the Throne and that He is not in one place rather than another, they came at times to say that He is everywhere. Some of them say that He exists and that His essence has no end, thus making Him one of the created beings or the very existence of those beings. At other times, they say that He is nowhere at all, neither within the world nor outside it, thus making Him like nonexistent things.

They therefore continually vacillate between associating partners with Allah and negation: either they make Him like created beings, or they make Him like nonexistent things. The former is prevalent among their worshippers and Sufis, while the latter is prevalent among their scholars and speculative theologians.

Thus, since the author of al-Fusūs and others like him belonged to the first category, they identified Him with existing things themselves, sanctioned every form of polytheism in the world, and identified Him with the worshipper and the worshipped, the active and passive partners in intercourse, and the reviler and the reviled. They said that no one has ever worshipped anything but Allah, and that no one can worship anything but Allah. Indeed, in their view, it is inconceivable that the worshipper and the worshipped could be