the “first meaning” is affirmed by common agreement. All agree that Allah, blessed and exalted is He, has no equal among existing things; that His dissimilarity to created beings with respect to their attributes far exceeds the dissimilarity between any two created beings; and that He is too great and exalted to resemble any created thing or even approach it in attributes. But this is not the meaning intended by the versifier. Nor did he intend the “third meaning,” since he held that denying separateness necessarily entails indwelling and union. This applies only to the “second meaning.” Denying the “third meaning,” by contrast, entails direct adjacency and contact, which the versifier did not mention. This “third” meaning entails the second, but not conversely: separateness in the narrower sense, as opposed to direct adjacency, necessarily entails separateness in the broader sense, as opposed to interpenetration and sharing a location, but not conversely.
Once it is understood that the versifier intended this broader separateness—the familiar meaning in language, ordinary speech, and scholarly discourse—those who dispute with him say: “We do not concede that, if He is not separate, indwelling or union necessarily follows.”
For this is like someone saying, “If He is not outside the world, He must be inside it.” Yet it is well known that his opponent says, “He is neither inside the world nor outside it.” Likewise, he says, “He is neither separate from it nor sharing its location, neither together with it nor apart from it.” He also says: “I deny both separateness and sharing a location, and indwelling and union fall under sharing a location. Thus, I do not concede that, if I am not separate from the Creator, He must dwell in me or be united with me.”
This is a well-known position among the proponents of negation. For among the “proponents of negation” who say that the Creator is neither above the world nor outside it and separate from it, some say that He dwells within it or is united with it.