Doctrine

Hujwiri reports, via Shaykh Sahlaki, that Abu Abdullah al-Dastani is credited with the saying: «التوحید عنک موجود و أنت فی التوحید مفقود» — Tawhid exists from you, yet you yourself are absent (mafqud) within Tawhid.

The point is that a person's affirmation of Divine Unity may be verbally sound, and yet the affirmer remains deficient because he does not stand by what tawhid truly requires of him. According to Hujwiri's gloss, the lowest degree of realizing tawhid is:

• nafy al-tasarruf — negating one's own claim to agency or control over the dominion (mulk), and
• ithbat al-taslim — affirming one's submission of all one's affairs to God, may He be exalted.

Thus genuine tawhid is not merely a correct statement about God but the effacement of the self's claim to independent action; so long as the self still asserts its own tasarruf, the person is 'absent' from the very unity he professes.