extend this to dogs, pigs, filth, and dirt. If Allah Most High has said:

“They have certainly disbelieved who say, ‘Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary,’”

and the rest of the verse, then what of someone who says that Allah is the unbelievers, hypocrites, children, madmen, impure and foul-smelling things, and everything else?

If Allah rejected the statement of the Jews and Christians when they said:

“We are the children of Allah and His beloved,”

and said to them:

“Say, ‘Then why does He punish you for your sins? Rather, you are human beings from among those He has created,’”

and the rest of the verse, then what of someone who claims that the Jews and Christians are the very existence of the Lord, the Creator—not other than Him or distinct from Him—and that it is inconceivable for Allah to punish anyone but Himself? Or that everyone who speaks in the universe is identical with the one who listens, as in the Prophet’s words, may Allah bless him and grant him peace:

“Allah has pardoned my community for what they say within themselves.”

And that the one who has intercourse is identical with the one with whom he has intercourse? Their poet even said:

“My hand delights when it passes over my body,
For in truth, I am none other than you.”

Know that these people’s disbelief—in saying that Allah is all His created beings—is greater than the disbelief of the Christians in saying:

“Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary.”

The Christians are astray, and most of them do not understand their doctrine of divine unity, for it is something imagined that can neither be known nor rationally understood. They make the Lord one substance, then make Him three substances, explaining this in terms of a multiplicity of properties and persons, which are the hypostases. Yet according to them, properties are not substances; thus, besides their disbelief, they contradict themselves. Likewise, these heretics who profess universal union are astray, and most of them do not understand the teaching of