Sufi metaphysics

On the other hand, waḥdat al-shuhūd, meaning "Apparentism" or "Monotheism of Witness", holds that God and his creation are entirely separate.

The mystical thinker and theologian Abu Saeed Mubarak Makhzoomi discussed the concept of waḥdat al-wujūd in his book Tohfa Mursala.

From the perspective of tanzih, Ibn Arabi declared that wujūd belongs to God alone, and, in his famous phrase, the things "have never smelt a whiff of wujud."

On lower levels, wujūd is the underlying substance of "everything other than God" (māsiwāAllāh)—which is how Ibn Arabi and others define the "cosmos" or "universe" (al-ʿālam).

[12] Sachal Sarmast and Bulleh Shah, two Sufi poets from present day Pakistan, were also ardent followers of Waḥdat al-wujūd.

This methodology was given a name of tashkik al-wujud and it thus explains that there is gradation of existence that stand in a vast hierarchical chain of being (marāṭib al-wujūd) from floor (farsh) to divine throne (ʿarsh), but the wujūd of each existent māhīyya is nothing but a grade of the single reality of wujūd whose source is God, the absolute being (al-wujūd al-mutlaq).

[16] However, it is important to note that Ibn Arabi was influenced by Al Ghazali, who himself was a strong supporter of the Ash'arite creed.

[19] Sufis in the 19th century, such as Pir Meher Ali Shah and Syed Waheed Ashraf, meanwhile noted that the two concepts only differ in that wahdat-al-wujud states that God and the universe aren't identical.

[34][35][36][37][38] However, according to a number of scholars including al-Sha'rani (d. 573/1565) and 'Abd al-Ra'uf al-Munawi (d. 1031/1621), the books of Ibn 'Arabi have been altered and distorted by some anonymous apostates and heretics, and therefore many sayings and beliefs were attributed to him, which are not true to what he actually wrote.

'Ali al-Fansuri, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Mir Valiuddin [de] and Titus Burckhardt disagree that waḥdat al-wujūd is identified with pantheism.

The concept can be viewed as analogous or related to pantheism insofar as it does not account for any separation between the divine and the material world.

[44] Some believe that wahdat al-mawjud originates from Greek philosophy, such as Heraclitus' assertion that "God is day and night, winter and summer, many and little, solid and liquid.

Under this understanding, human beings can become al-Insān al-Kāmil (achieve perfection) and attain the wisdom of God.

[44] Sheikh Siti Jenar or Sunan Lemah Abang is, according to the Babad Tanah Jawi ("History of the land of Java") manuscripts, one of the nine Wali Sanga ("Nine Saints") to whom Indonesian legend attributes the establishment of Islam as the dominant religion among the Javanese.

His teaching of manunggaling kawula gusti (union of man and God) gained opposition from Wali Sanga and the Sultanate of Demak.