distinct from the other, he has affirmed a distinction. If he affirms a distinction between these two, then distinguishing between the worshipper and the object of worship is all the more warranted.

If he says, “Rather, they are one and the same,” he is treated as the sophists are treated, for this statement is among the most abhorrent forms of sophistry. He is told:

“If they are one and the same, then we shall strike you and kill you, and the same thing will have killed and destroyed itself.”

A person may wrong himself through sins and say:

“Our Lord, we have wronged ourselves.”

This is because his own soul urged him to evil, and the soul continually urges evil. Yet its commanding and its acting are distinct aspects: there must be some multiplicity, either in the essence or in the attributes. Everyone knows through sensory perception and immediate certainty that the man who wronged another is not that other man, nor is his case like that of a man who wronged himself.

If this is true of created beings, then the Creator is far more distinct from created beings than one of them is from another. Glory be to Him! Exalted is He far above what the wrongdoers say.

Were it not that the adherents of this doctrine have grown numerous, gained prominence, and spread widely—and that many people regard them as the foremost of mankind, the spiritual masters of Islam, masters of monotheism and realization, and the finest followers of the spiritual path, even preferring them to the prophets, the messengers, and the greatest religious masters—we would have had no need to expose the falsity of these statements and make this misguidance clear.

But it should be understood that misguidance has no limit, and that when minds become corrupt, their misguidance no longer has any conceivable limit. Glory be to Him who has made such distinctions within humankind, making some the finest of all beings and others worse than devils. But likening these people to the prophets