He is all-encompassing.”

He mentioned further remarks concerning created things and how some encompass others, according to his understanding. He then said:

“Allah—majestic is His glory and exalted is His greatness—is a Being who exists independently, unique in His attributes and distinct from all His creation. He does not indwell bodies, nor do accidents inhere in Him. Nothing other than Him is within His Essence, nor is anything of His Essence within anything other than Him. Within creation there is only creation, and within the Essence there is only the Creator.”

I say: This negates indwelling, just as he negated it at the outset.

He then said:

“Section: The Testimony to Divine Oneness and a Description of Its Affirmation by Those Endowed with Certainty

The testimony of one endowed with certainty consists in his certainty that Allah is before everything and nearer than everything. He is the Giver and the Withholder, the One who guides and the One who leads astray. None gives or withholds, harms or benefits, except Allah, just as there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah. He witnesses Allah’s nearness to him, His watching over him, His power over him, and His encompassing him. Thus his gaze and concern turn first to Allah, before anything else. He remembers Him in everything, empties his heart of everything else for Him, turns back to Him in everything, and worships Him to the exclusion of everything else.

He knows that Allah is nearer to his heart than his vein, nearer to his spirit than his life, nearer to his sight than his gaze, and nearer to his tongue than his saliva—with a nearness that He Himself has described, without drawing nearer or coming closer—and that He, exalted is He, is above the Throne throughout all this; that He is exalted, far above the earth, just as He is exalted, far above the Throne; and that His nearness to the earth and to everything is like His nearness