He replied: 'She is He (hiya huwa) in terms of affirmation, existence, vision, and certainty; yet He is not she (la huwa hiya) as a whole, a collection, encompassment, or confinement.'

Had the matter been as Ibn al-Dukin claimed, our Sheikh [al-Khasibi]—may God sanctify his soul—would have said: 'She is they' (hiya huma) [referring to the Meaning and the Name/Mim]. Furthermore, it was not enough for him [Ibn al-Dukin] to fabricate against God—exalted be His mention—but he even said: 'This is what I heard from the Trustworthy Sheikh Abu al-Husayn Muhammad bin 'Ali al-Jilli.' Yet, the Sheikh [al-Jilli]—may God preserve him—declares anyone who holds such a belief [of partitioning the Meaning] to be a disbeliever.

He [the Prince] says when he wrote to the Sheikh regarding this: 'By God, I never said this, nor shall I ever say it. It is not my religion, nor the religion of my Sheikh, nor the religion of the past masters of this Sect. The Meaning is nothing other than the Pre-eternal Meaning, and He manifests only through His own Essence. I have said, and I continue to say: When the Pre-eternal One appears in the likeness of the Name's Form [the Mim], it is an act of honoring the Mim without any cessation or transference [of the Essence]. That Visual Form is not the totality of the Creator (Kulliyyat al-Bari), yet the Creator is not something other than it. God shall hold accountable whoever distorts my words, disputes them, or adds to them.'