is neither His creation, nor a part of His creation, nor an attribute of His creation. Rather, He—glorified and exalted is He—is distinct in His holy self and separate, in His exalted essence, from His creatures. This is what the four divine scriptures—the Torah, the Gospel, the Psalms, and the Quran—teach. Allah Most High has endowed His servants with an innate disposition to recognize this, and reason likewise points to it.

I have often thought that the emergence of people like these is the foremost cause of the rise of the Tatars and the effacement of Islamic law, and that these people are the forerunners of the one-eyed, lying Dajjāl, who claims that he is Allah. For in their view, everything is Allah, but some things are greater and mightier than others.

According to the author of al-Fusūs, some loci of manifestation and self-disclosure are greater because of the greatness of their essences, which are fixed in nonexistence. According to al-Rūmī, some individual entities are greater, since some particular instances of a universal are greater than others. According to the rest, all things are parts of Him, and some parts are greater than others.

Thus, in their view, the Dajjāl, like Pharaoh, is among the great knowers of Allah and is greater than the messengers after our Prophet Muhammad—may Allah Most High bless him and grant him peace—and Abraham, Moses, and Jesus—peace be upon them. Moses is the slayer of Pharaoh, who claims lordship; and Allah Most High will give the Messiah of guidance—of whom it was said that he is Allah Most High, though he is innocent of this—power over the messiah of misguidance, who said that he is Allah.