This is an error into which many later Sufis fell. Hence al-Junayd—may Allah have mercy on him—refuted them when he was asked about divine oneness and replied: “It is distinguishing the Eternal from the created.” Al-Junayd, the foremost master of the Sufis, thus explained that affirming divine oneness is incomplete unless one distinguishes between the eternal Lord and the created servant—not as these people claim, making the two one and the same. These are the proponents of particular, restricted union and indwelling. As for those who advocate universal, unrestricted indwelling and union, they say that He Himself is everywhere, or that He is the very existence of created beings. They have been discussed at length elsewhere.

And (the point here is that al-Hallāj did not confine himself to any one of these categories. Rather, he made statements that, by agreement among the various groups of Muslims, constitute disbelief and warrant execution, as has been explained elsewhere. Likewise, most of the spiritual masters repudiated and censured him, including al-Junayd, ʿUmar ibn ʿUthmān al-Makkī, and Abū Yaʿqūb al-Nahrajūrī. Those among them who were uncertain about his case did not know what he had actually said—except for those who advocated indwelling and union, whether unrestrictedly or in a particular instance: such a person supposes that this was al-Hallāj’s position and defends it. Hence Ibn Sabʿīn’s sect included a number of men of wrongdoing, among them al-Hallāj.

The great majority of Sufi masters and scholars held that al-Hallāj was not one of the righteous spiritual masters. Rather, he was a heretic, and his asceticism had various motives that would take too long to describe. Nor was he among those who experienced the annihilation of self-awareness in “the oneness of divine lordship”; rather, he had