and favored you with sons?”

If Allah has declared those who make some of His servants a part of Him to be unbelievers, then what of those who sometimes make His servants a part of Him and sometimes make Him a part of them? May Allah curse the proponents of these doctrines and vindicate Himself, His Book, His Messenger, and His believing servants against them.

The fourth point:

His statement is contradictory in yet another respect. When he says, “‘Ayn is that in which Allah becomes distinct, and the world in its entirety is the dark center of His eye, which never sleeps,” he makes Him distinct throughout the entire world. Yet when he then says, “He is the light of the eye,” the remaining parts of the eye—the eyelids, lashes, dark center, and white—are left as parts in which He does not become distinct. Thus, he makes Him both distinct and not distinct in them.

(The fifth point)

The light of the eye depends on the eye and needs it, because it subsists in it. If Allah were in the world as light is in the eye, He would necessarily need the world. Know that this statement resembles the doctrine of those who hold that Allah dwells within creation. They say, “He is in the world as water is in a tuft of wool, or as life is in the body,” and other such things. They also say, “He is present in His essence in every place.”

This is the doctrine of the early Jahmiyyah, whom the imams of Islam declared to be unbelievers. It is reported that al-Jahm used to say, “He is like this air,” or that he said, “He is this air.”

His initial statement, “It is the dark center of Allah’s eye,” resembles the doctrine of those who hold that Allah and creation are one. They say, “He is like a piece of wax that assumes different forms while remaining one and the same.” According to them, He is existence itself, and His differing states are like the differing states of that piece of wax.