the realm of mulk (sovereignty). Those unfamiliar with the language of the messengers and the meaning of the Quran and Sunnah suppose that their references to sovereignty, dominion and supreme power accord with this scheme. But that is not so.

These people mislead Muslims in many ways. For example, they describe the “celestial sphere” as “originated,” meaning merely that it is caused, even though they consider it eternal. Yet whatever is originated must have been preceded by nonexistence. Neither in Arabic nor in any other language is something eternal and without beginning called originated. Allah has declared that He is the Creator of everything. Everything created is originated, and everything originated comes into existence after not having existed.

However, the speculative theologians among the Jahmiyyah and Muʿtazilah debated them inadequately: they neither properly understood what the messengers had conveyed nor rigorously established the conclusions of reason. Thus, they neither championed Islam nor defeated its enemies. They shared some of those people’s false premises while disputing some of their sound rational conclusions. Their shortcomings in knowledge derived from revelation and reason therefore helped strengthen the others’ misguidance, as has been explained at length elsewhere.

These philosophers sometimes identify “Gabriel” with the image that takes shape within the soul of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, while imagination is subordinate to the intellect. Then came heretics who shared the views of these heretical philosophers and claimed to be “friends of Allah,” that Allah’s friends are superior to His prophets, and that they receive directly from Allah without an intermediary. Among them was Ibn ʿArabī, author of al-Futūhāt and al-Fusūs, who said: