through false claims for which there is no proof, and whose falsity is evident with even the slightest degree of reason and faith, and the simplest passages heard from Scripture and the Quran. He also makes the disbelievers, hypocrites, and Pharaohs Allah’s people and His elect—the people of spiritual unveilings. This is false in several respects:

First:

He posited a fixed entity for him before his existence, and likewise for all other existing things, maintaining that this holds for him and all his states. Every existing entity or attribute, substance or accident, has its entity fixed before it exists. This is an error in which others preceded him, as explained earlier.

Second:

He maintained that Allah’s knowledge of the servant comes solely from His knowledge of that fixed entity in nonexistence, which constitutes the servant’s true reality, rather than from His own holy Essence. He further maintained that His knowledge of the fixed entities in nonexistence and their states prevents Him from doing anything otherwise, and that this is the secret of divine decree.

This entails describing Allah Most High as dependent upon these entities while they are independent of Him. It denies the perfection of knowledge and power that belongs to Him by virtue of His own Essence, and necessarily imputes ignorance and incapacity to Him. Part of this discourse resembles what Allah relates concerning those of whom He said:

“Allah has certainly heard the statement of those who said, ‘Indeed, Allah is poor, while we are rich.’”

The verse continues. For he makes the realities of the fixed entities in nonexistence independent of Allah with respect to their realities and entities, while making the Lord dependent upon them for His knowledge of them. He thus acquires His knowledge of them only from them. A servant acquires knowledge of perceptible things by perceiving them, while those perceived things are independent of the perceiver.