The Refutation of the Sufis in Their Doctrine of Pantheism

The Shaykh : It is not as the extremists among the Sufis say: "Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) is mixed with His creation, mixed as water is mixed with ice, and as butter is mixed with milk"; this unity is, in the claim of the Sufis, Allah! "And Allah is nothing but a monk in a church!" This is what they say. "And in the image, Allah is like a piece of ice," "Allah in the example is like the ice in which is the water." I do not have the complete poem memorized now. This is what Ibn Arabi says in "Al-Futuhat al-Makkiyyah" or in "Al-Fusus al-Hikam": "And in the image, Allah is like a piece of ice in which is the water." Can anyone separate the water from the ice? The water and the ice form a unity; this unity is the ice. His example is: this universe is Allah. So there is no Creator and no created, and there are not two existences: an obligatory existence, which is Allah, and a possible, created existence, which is the created. No, he said in explicit terms: "Everything you see with your eye is Allah." Those who deny the attributes of Allah and the exaltation of Allah above His creation meet the Sufis in this great misguidance; because the scholars of theology and the scholars of jurisprudence, it is true, do not believe in the unity of existence that the Sufis claim, but they meet them in this; for they say: Allah is present in every place, Allah is present in every existence, and this is the unity of existence exactly.
Therefore, it is obligatory to believe that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) is above all created things, and that He has risen above the Throne, and that He is self-sufficient regarding the worlds, not mixed with or intermingled with the creation as the Sufis believe, and as the common phrase today among all people gives. Who among you has not heard: "Allah is present in every place"? Who among you has not heard: "Allah is present in every existent"? And this is disbelief itself, and no one pays attention, as if people are drugged or bewitched; they say what is contrary to the consensus of the scholars of the Salaf, among whom are the four Imams. For example, Abu Hanifah in the book "Al-Fiqh al-Akbar" attributed to him, and I say attributed to him, because in reality this book is not established, and it is not established that Abu Hanifah left a book after him, but this is how his followers attribute this book to him, and their researchers say: "Attributed to Abu Hanifah." Nevertheless, it contains tawhid (the oneness of Allah); so he says: "Whoever denies that Allah is not in the sky has disbelieved." And this is not strange, because he denies the saying of Allah: , and he denies the many verses, some of which we have referred to, which are explicit that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) is above all the heavens and has risen above the Throne.
This is what is appropriate to say on the occasion of this serious issue, and before we move on to others, if any of the attendees has a question or inquiry regarding this topic, we will hear it and answer it, if Allah wills.