And when the jurist Abū Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Salām arrived in Cairo and was asked about him, he said:

“He is an evil shaykh, an accursed liar who holds that the world has no beginning and regards no sexual relations as forbidden.”

His statement, “He holds that the world has no beginning,” reflected the man’s actual position. This is a well-known form of unbelief, and the jurist Abū Muhammad declared him a disbeliever on that account. His teaching that the world is Allah, and that the world is Allah’s form and His very identity, had not yet come to light. This is greater unbelief than that of those who maintain that the world has no beginning while affirming a Necessary Existent and holding that contingent existence emanated from Him.

Shaykhs who had met him in person said that he was a liar and a fabricator. His books, such as al-Futūhāt al-Makkiyya (The Meccan Revelations) and others, contain lies that no discerning person could fail to recognize. Yet he is closer to Islam than Ibn Sab‘īn, al-Qūnawī, al-Tilimsānī, and others among his followers. If the one who is closer holds such unbelief—which is greater than the unbelief of the Jews and Christians—what of those who are further from Islam? I have not described even a tenth of the unbelief they express.

Nevertheless, their true nature was unclear to those unfamiliar with their condition, just as the true nature of the esotericist Qarmatians was unclear when they claimed to be Fatimids and professed allegiance to Shiism. Their followers thus became inclined toward them, unaware of their concealed unbelief. For this reason, anyone who inclined toward them was one of two kinds: either a hypocritical heretic or an ignorant, misguided man.

The same applies to these proponents of the identity of Creator and creation: their leading figures are leaders of unbelief who must be put to death, and repentance is not accepted from