‘When any of you intends to undertake a matter, let him pray two units of prayer other than the obligatory prayer. Then let him say:

O Allah, I seek Your guidance through Your knowledge, and I seek ability through Your power, and I ask You of Your immense bounty. You have power, and I have none; You know, and I do not; and You are the Knower of all unseen things. O Allah, if You know that this matter—and he should name it—is good for me in my religion, my livelihood, and the outcome of my affairs, then decree it for me, make it easy for me, and bless it for me. But if You know that this matter is bad for me in my religion, my livelihood, and the outcome of my affairs, then turn it away from me and turn me away from it. Decree what is good for me wherever it may be, then make me content with it.’”

The four imams and all the others mentioned agree that Allah Most High will be seen in the Hereafter and that the Quran is the speech of Allah. Yet the author of al-Murshidah mentions none of the affirmations upheld by the various groups among the people of the Sunnah and the community. Nor does he mention belief in the prophethood of the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—or in the Last Day and what the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—reported concerning Paradise and Hell, resurrection and reckoning, the trial of the grave, the Cistern, and the Prophet’s intercession—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—for those guilty of major sins. All these fundamentals are agreed upon among the people of the Sunnah and the community, and their scholars customarily include them in concise statements of creed. Instead, he restricted its contents to what accords with his foundational position: that Allah is absolute existence. This is the position of the philosophers and the Jahmīs