“And every utterance in existence is His speech;
its prose and verse are all the same to us.”

They therefore object to the people of the Sunnah when they affirm the divine attributes without calling them “other than Allah,” yet they themselves do not call created things “other than Allah.” I have heard this contradiction from their own shaykhs. They are indeed in manifest error.

As for the poet’s words:

“I am the one I love, and the one I love is I?”

And his words:

“If I am Laylā and Laylā is I.”

The poet intended only union in the conventional sense, like the union between two lovers: each loves what the other loves, hates what the other hates, says what the other says, and does what the other does. This is similarity and likeness, not the union of one individual being with another. He had become so absorbed in his beloved that he lost awareness of himself, as another poet said:

“Absorbed in you, I lost sight of myself,
and thought that you were I.”

Either he is mistaken, overwhelmed by the loss of self-awareness, or he means similarity, likeness, and unity in what is sought and feared—not union of essences. If, however, he intends union of essences while understanding what he is saying, then he is a liar and fabricator who deserves the punishment of fabricators.

As for the statement:

“If people saw the Real, they would see neither a worshipper nor one worshipped,”

this is of the same kind as the statements of the heretical adherents of unity, who make no distinction between the Lord and the servant;