Clarification of the Correct Tawhid (the Oneness of Allah) and Mention of Its Two Pillars (A Refutation of the Sufis in Their Claim of the Unity of Existence and the Claim that Allah is in Every Place

The Shaykh : ... We do not need to delve into this issue; it is sufficient for us to mention two matters. The first matter is known by many Islamic intellectuals who possess a correct Islamic culture, namely the deviation of those who claim affiliation with Sufism from the correct tawhid (the oneness of Allah) when they do not believe that there is a Creator and a created being, but rather they believe in what is called the Unity of Existence, meaning that the Creator and the created are one thing. Therefore, some of their extremists explicitly state that the testimony that there is no god but Allah is the tawhid of the general people, whereas the tawhid of the special people is "He is He." Consequently, they reduced the best dhikr (remembrance of Allah), which the authentic hadiths identify as "There is no god but Allah" being the best dhikr with absolute and exclusive preference, to the Unity of Existence, "He is He." Then they reduced this reduction further until they said, "He is He, so there is nothing besides Him." Thus, this is atheism in the religion of Allah under the name of Islam. This truly includes the extremists of the Sufis. However, opposite to this, there is a deviation that meets with this clear and dangerous deviation: there is a deviation among the masses of the Islamic schools of thought that exist today, but most people do not know that they meet in a belief with this dangerous deviation. This is the statement of those called the Maturidiyyah and the Asha'irah, let alone the old Mu'tazilah and the Shi'ah that exist today, as they meet with the old Shi'ah in the deviation in belief that I will mention. And on the face of the earth today, there is a group of the Khawarij who wanted to distinguish themselves and remove themselves from the affiliation to the Khawarij, namely the group known as the Ibadhiyyah. All these groups and all these schools of thought meet with the Sufis in the claim of the Unity of Existence, but with a shining phrase they display the transcendence of Allah, while in reality they are those who deny the divine attributes and deny the existence of Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He). I mean by this that these Muslims, and we hear the effect of their belief in ordinary gatherings, namely their saying that Allah is present in every place, Allah is present in every place, Allah is present in all existence. This means claiming the Unity of Existence, because the world, by the Book of Allah and the hadith of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), knows, as came in the hadith of 'Imran ibn Husayn in Sahih al-Bukhari: Then He created the heavens and the earth. So when these people say that Allah is in every place, it means that either they deny that there is a Creator and a created being, and this is the denial of the divine attributes that the interpreters who interpret the verses of attributes and deny the existence of Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) above all created things fell into. So the Salaf called them the Mu'attilah (those who deny attributes), meaning that they deny the existence of Allah when they say Allah is in every place. Or they say that there is no Creator and no created being, but rather it is one thing, and their opinion returns to the claim of the Unity of Existence, but not with their usual explicitness. Or they say with the misguidance of the Christians and something more severe, where the Christians said in the three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) dwells in 'Isa (Jesus), who was born from the womb of Mary. But these who restrict Allah to every place are more misguided than the Christians who restricted Allah (Mighty and Majestic) to three persons. And from the great misguidance of the Sufis who explicitly claim the Unity of Existence is the one called Muhyi al-Din ibn 'Arabi, and some of the shaykhs in Damascus used to say: "Muhyi al-Din is a mistake, and the correct is Mumhi al-Din," for he is not one who revives the religion, but rather one who erases the religion. This man explicitly said: "The Christians were disbelievers only because they restricted Allah to three things, whereas we—meaning himself—generalized Him in all existence." Therefore, they said: "He is He," then they said, "He is He, so there is nothing." Thus, the statement that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) is in every place, which contradicts the texts of the Sunnah and the Qur'an, meets exactly with the claim of the Unity of Existence, and the necessary consequence of this claim is the denial of the Creator (Glorified and Exalted is He), as the materialists, communists, and their like say...