speculative theology and rational inquiry contain statements of this kind that are not found among their leading authorities and predecessors. Despite their misguidance and ignorance, these later figures claim to possess greater knowledge and understanding than the early generations of the Muslim community and their predecessors. They went so far as to declare existence to be one, as did Ibn ‘Arabī, the author of al-Fusūs, and others like him. Entering through this door, they ultimately abandoned all reason and religion.

Yet they claim that the earlier masters—such as al-Junayd ibn Muhammad, Sahl ibn ‘Abd Allāh al-Tustarī, Ibrāhīm al-Khawwās, and others—died without understanding Allah’s oneness. They censure al-Junayd and others like him for distinguishing between the Lord and the servant, as in his statement: “Affirming Allah’s oneness means distinguishing that which came into being from that which is beginningless.”

By my life, their conception of oneness, in which they identify the existence of the creature with the existence of the Creator, is among the gravest forms of heresy condemned by the rightly guided masters. Those masters knew it to be false, so they rejected it, warned people against it, and instructed them to distinguish between the Lord and the servant, the Creator and the creature, and the Beginningless and that which came into being. They taught that affirming Allah’s oneness means knowing that the Lord is separate and distinct from His creatures: nothing of His Essence is within His creatures, and nothing of His creatures is within His Essence.

They further claim to know Allah better than the messengers do, and that the messengers acquire their knowledge of Allah only from their lamp-niches. They interpret the Quran in ways that accord with their false esoteric teachings. For example, concerning His words,

“Because of their sins,”

they say that these were what carried them forward, so that they drowned in the oceans of knowledge of Allah. They also claim that ‘adhāb (punishment) is derived from ‘udhūbah (sweetness), and they say that