These people erred only because they failed to distinguish between Allah’s knowledge of things before they come into being—and their being recorded with Him in the Mother of the Book, the Preserved Tablet—and their being established in external reality, distinct from Allah Most High’s knowledge. The belief of the Muslims of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah is that Allah, glorified and exalted is He, recorded the decrees of created beings in the Preserved Tablet before creating them. They therefore distinguish between existence in knowledge and concrete existence in external reality.

For this reason, the first revelation to the Messenger of Allah, may Allah Most High bless him and grant him peace, was the surah:

“Read in the name of your Lord who created,”
“Created man from a clinging clot.”
“Read, and your Lord is the Most Generous,”
“Who taught by the pen,”
“Taught man what he did not know.”

He thus mentioned the four modes of existence: concrete existence, which He created, and existence in writing, which corresponds to verbal existence and indicates existence in knowledge. He also made clear that Allah Most High knew it. This is why He mentioned teaching by the pen, for it necessarily entails the three modes.

This doctrine—I mean the claim that a nonexistent thing is an entity established in itself, independently of Allah Most High’s knowledge—although false and clear in its implications, was nevertheless introduced into Islam some four hundred years ago. Ibn ʿArabī agreed with its proponents, and it is one of the two foundations of his doctrine in al-Fusūs.

The second foundation is that the existence of things brought into being and created is identical with the existence of the Creator: it is neither different from it nor anything other than it. This is what he innovated, setting himself apart from all the spiritual masters and scholars who preceded him. It is also the doctrine of the other advocates of the identity of Creator and creation. Ibn ʿArabī, however, is the closest of them to Islam, and his statements are better in many places, for he distinguishes between that which manifests and the forms in which it manifests