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The substance of these people’s doctrine

The existence of created things is identical to the existence of Allah, Exalted is He. Their existence is not distinct from His, and there is absolutely nothing besides Him. Thus, they regard anyone who calls them proponents of indwelling, or says that they profess indwelling, as veiled from understanding their doctrine and as having failed to penetrate the inner reality of their position. For anyone who says that Allah indwells created beings thereby maintains that what is indwelt is distinct from what indwells it. In their view, this constitutes duality and affirms two existences: first, the existence of the Real who indwells; and second, the existence of the created being in which He indwells. They do not acknowledge two existences at all.

There is no doubt that this doctrine involves less unbelief than theirs. It is the doctrine of many of the Jahmiyyah whose teachings the early generations refuted: those who claim that Allah, in His essence, is in every place. Numerous imams and members of the early generations reported this doctrine from the Jahmiyyah and declared them disbelievers on its account. Indeed, many imams—including Ibn al-Mubārak, Yūsuf ibn Asbāt, and a group of scholars and hadith scholars among the followers of Ahmad and others—regarded them, on this account, as falling outside the seventy-two sects. This is the doctrine of some Jahmī theologians and many of those among them devoted to worship.

There is no doubt that the deviation, Jahmism, and heresy of these later figures are an elaboration and completion of the deviation, Jahmism, and heresy of those earlier Jahmiyyah.