For this reason Ibn ʿArabī, in al-Futūḥāt, lists four creeds. The first is the creed of Abū al-Maʿālī and his ilk, set out without any supporting proof; the second is that same creed buttressed by its proof; the third is the philosophers’ creed; and the fourth is the creed of the Realized Ones. The philosopher, he explains, distinguishes between existence, possibility, and necessity, whereas these people maintain that existence is a single reality. The Sufi they revere is the very Sufi whom Ibn Sīnā extolled, followed thereafter by the Realized One himself.

Such people are neither Muslims, nor Jews, nor Christians; indeed, many idol-worshippers are in a better state than they are. The dominance enjoyed by these leading speculative philosophers, together with their Sufis and their followers, was in large part made possible by the innovations of the sectarians— the Jahmiyyah, the Muʿtazilah, the Rāfiḍah, and all who embraced their corrupt principles—for these innovators and those atheists share faulty foundations that they regard as sound rational propositions, when in truth they are false, mendacious, and contrary to both revelation and reason.

Doctrines of the philosophers that no faction of the Muslims has ever espoused:

Later mutakallimūn sought to refute them for their manifest unbelief—unbelief that openly contradicted the Muslims’ creed—such as the claim that the world is eternal, the denial that God knows particulars, and the rejection of the resurrection. These three points are the very ones for which Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī declares them unbelievers in The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Another group contends that all their other false assertions are simply the same innovations adopted by some scholastic theologians, such as denying the divine attributes. The truth, however, is otherwise: the philosophers hold many positions that no faction of the Muslims—neither the innovators nor the people of the sunnah—has ever accepted, including their views on prophethood, the angels, the Speech of God, their stance on intercession, and their denial of God’s will and power. None of this necessarily follows from affirming the world’s eternity, for among those who uphold that idea are thinkers who still say that God acts by His will and power, as in one of the two opinions cited—and preferred—by Abū al-Barakāt.

Likewise, they claim that angels are nothing more than images formed in the soul, or that they are separate intelligences; that each of these intelligences brings everything else into being; that the Active Intellect governs all that lies beneath the celestial sphere; and that revelation…