For if you examine what you call me to,
you will find it is the very thing forbidden, O my neighbor.
And also:
The sea is nothing but waves, nothing else,
even if multiplicity divides it.
There are other poems of this kind, and countless examples in prose. They deceive the ignorant into thinking that they are the shaykhs of Islam and leaders of right guidance whom Allah Most High has granted an honorable reputation within the Muslim community—such as Sa‘īd ibn al-Musayyib, al-Hasan al-Basrī, ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-‘Azīz, Mālik ibn Anas, al-Awzā‘ī, Ibrāhīm ibn Adham, Sufyān al-Thawrī, al-Fudayl ibn ‘Iyād, Ma‘rūf al-Karkhī, al-Shāfi‘ī, Abū Sulaymān, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Bishr al-Hāfī, ‘Abd Allāh ibn al-Mubārak, Shaqīq al-Balkhī, and countless others.
These include later figures such as al-Junayd ibn Muhammad al-Qawārīrī, Sahl ibn ‘Abd Allāh al-Tustarī, ‘Umar ibn ‘Uthmān al-Makkī, and those who came after them—down to Abū Tālib al-Makkī, and then figures such as Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Kīlānī, Shaykh ‘Adī, Shaykh Abū al-Bayān, Shaykh Abū Madyan, Shaykh ‘Aqīl, Shaykh Abū al-Wafā’, Shaykh Raslān, Shaykh ‘Abd al-Rahīm, Shaykh ‘Abd Allāh al-Yūnīnī, Shaykh al-Qurashī, and other shaykhs like them who lived in the Hijaz, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, the Maghrib, and Khurasan, among both the earlier and later generations. All of them agree that these people, and those superior to them, are unbelievers, and that Allah—glorified is He—