It is well known that the prophets, peace be upon them, are greater than Allah’s allies. The prophets brought matters that reason cannot discover, not matters that reason knows to be false. They therefore convey things that bewilder reason, not things that reason deems impossible. These heretics, however, claim that rational impossibilities are true, that two contradictory propositions can both be true, and that whatever conflicts with plain reason and authentic transmitted texts is true.

There is no doubt that they are given to fantasies and delusions. They imagine and conceive things within themselves, then suppose that these exist in external reality, although they are nothing but their own imaginings. False imagination can conceive things that have no reality.

For this reason, they say:

“The realm of reality is the realm of imagination,”

as Ibn Arabī and others say. They therefore relate a story mentioned by Sa‘īd al-Farghānī, the commentator on Ibn al-Fārid’s ode, who was one of their shaykhs.

As for his words:

“Between me and You, my selfhood presses upon me;
By Your right, remove my selfhood from between us.”

These words admit three interpretations: they may be uttered by a heretic, a zindīq, or a person of consummate truthfulness.

In the first interpretation, he means to ask that the actual existence of his selfhood be removed, so that it may be said that his existence is the existence of the True One, and his selfhood is the selfhood of the True One. Thus, he would not be described as distinct from Allah or as anything other than Him.