Allah’s knowledge of things before they come into being, His recording them, and His informing others about them. This is distinct from their actual existence, for they do not actually exist until they are created. Whoever fails to distinguish between a thing’s being established in knowledge, speech, and writing and its reality in the external world—or between existence in knowledge and actual existence—is profoundly ignorant and astray.

Scholars have condemned in the strongest terms those who say that a nonexistent thing is an entity established in the external world. Although these people have a specious rational argument, supposing that its distinctness in knowledge and will entails its distinctness in the external world, they are mistaken. The correct understanding is to distinguish between being established in knowledge and being established in external reality. As for the claim that things exist before they are created, this is still greater ignorance and misguidance.

As for his claim that all the saints, even the prophets, derive knowledge from the Seal of the Saints, this contradicts both reason and revelation. The prophets are superior to the saints, and the best saints are those who follow the prophets most closely. Thus, Abū Bakr was the best person upon whom the sun has risen after the prophets and messengers.

Likewise, his claim that the Seal of the Saints derives outward knowledge from the same source as the Prophet, but derives inward knowledge from the source from which the angel receives what he reveals to the Prophet, is among the gravest forms of unbelief and misguidance. It rests upon the doctrine of the proponents of philosophy, who regard prophethood as an emanation flowing into the prophet’s intellect and say that the angel