Several Contested Issues — Six Schools on Being

چند معرکۃ الآرا مسائل — وجود میں چھ مذاہب

In the history of Islamic philosophy and mysticism, six major schools of thought on the nature of being have been identified:

1. Ahl al-Mabāyanat (Proponents of Separateness)

These hold that the being of the created things is entirely distinct and separate from the Being of Allah. On this view, there is an absolute ontological gulf between God and creation. This is the position of the majority of the scholastic theologians (mutakallimūn).

2. Wahdat al-Shuhūd (Unity of Witnessing)

This is associated with Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi (Imam Rabbani). The mystic, in the state of spiritual absorption (istighrāq), witnesses only Allah and sees nothing else. But this is a state of the mystic's subjective experience — not a metaphysical claim that created things have no separate existence. Upon return (ruju'), the mystic acknowledges the reality of the created order.

3. Wahdat al-Wujūd (Unity of Being)

This is the position associated with Ibn 'Arabi (Shaykh al-Akbar). It holds that being, in the ultimate analysis, is one — the being of all things is the Being of Allah, manifested through different modes and levels. Created things do not possess being of their own; they are self-disclosures (tajalliyāt) of the One Real Being. Sharr (evil) is adami (privative/non-being) and is not really a 'being' at all.

4. Jamʿ wa Baqāʾ (Gathering and Subsistence)

This position recognizes both the reality of Divine Unity and the reality of created multiplicity, holding them together in a higher synthesis. The mystic who attains baqā' (subsistence after annihilation) lives simultaneously in both the state of unity and the state of differentiation.

5. Wahdat al-Mawjūd (Unity of the Existent)

A fifth school denies any genuine qualities or independence to created things, reducing them entirely to modifications of the one Existent.

6. The Sophists (Sufistā'iyya)

The Sophists deny the reality of the external world altogether, holding that everything is illusion or subjective construction. The author refutes this position: the Sophist's own claim that 'everything is illusion' is itself either true or false — if true, the world is real; if false, the Sophist is refuted by his own position. The author endorses a position close to Wahdat al-Wujūd in the sense that all genuine being is from Allah, while affirming the real (though derivative and dependent) existence of the created world.