so they say, “He is not within the world, just as He is not outside it.” Or they say, “He is the existence of created things, not the things themselves.” Or they say, “He is absolute existence.” Thus they affirm Him within whatever they affirm, when their hearts are alike in negation and denial—namely, denying a real being distinct from created things and exalted above them.

They differ only in what they affirm, forcing their innate dispositions and their reason to accept what is impossible and contradictory. They say, “He is within the world, yet He is not within it,” or, “He is the world, yet He is not the world.” Alternatively, they give precedence to affirmation and say, “Rather, He is existence itself”; or to negation and say, “He is neither within the world nor outside it.” Or they adhere to affirmation in one state and negation in another: when reason predominates in one of them, he gives precedence to negation—that He is not within the world; when spiritual feeling and worship predominate, he favors affirmation—that He is within this existence, or is this existence itself. You will find no Jahmī except in one of these four positions. Although they differ in what they affirm—as I have explained to you—they share this denial.

I have seen among them and in their books, and heard from them and from those who report about them, as much of this as Allah has willed. In all these states, they have lost their way concerning the One they worship, their God and their Creator. Then I read the statements of the early Muslim generations and the imams, all of whom describe them in similar terms. Allah has therefore blessed us to follow the path of the believers, and we have believed in Allah and His Messenger.

Every one of these people finds himself unsettled by this belief because it is inherently contradictory. His unease is only partly soothed by some form of unquestioning adherence to someone he reveres, by his fear of disagreeing with his companions, or by his claim that this is a judgment of fancy and imagination rather than reason.