Deliverance from Error

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

Praise be to God, with whose praise every letter and every discourse begins. Blessings be on Muhammad the Chosen, bearer of prophecy and of the message, and on his family and his Companions, who guide others out of error.

Now then: you have asked me, my brother in religion, to set out for you the aim and the secrets of the sciences, and the pitfalls and the depths of the doctrines. You want me to tell you what I suffered in extracting the truth from the turmoil of the sects, with their divergent roads and paths. You want to know how I dared to rise from the lowland of taqlīd to the high ground of inquiry. You want to know what I gained, first, from kalām; what I found distasteful, second, in the ways of the party of taʿlīm, who make the grasp of truth depend on following the imam; what I came, third, to despise in the ways of philosophizing; and what I came at last to approve in the way of Sufism. You ask, too, what core of truth became clear to me as I searched through people’s opinions, what turned me away from spreading knowledge in Baghdad, though my students were many, and what drew me back to it in Nishapur after a long interval. Once I was sure your desire was sincere, I hastened to answer your request. So I say, seeking God’s help, trusting in Him, relying on Him and taking refuge in Him:note

In the prime of my youth and the bloom of my life, ever since I neared puberty, before I was twenty, and until now, when I am past fifty, I have never stopped plunging into the swell of this deep sea. I have waded through its flood as the bold wade, not as the timid and wary. I have pushed into every darkness, charged at every difficulty and thrown myself into every quagmire. I have examined the creed of every sect and sought to uncover the secrets of every faction’s doctrine. My aim was to tell the one in the right from the one in the wrong, the follower of the Prophet’s way from the innovator. I have left no Batini without wishing to learn his esotericism, and no Zahiri without wanting to know what his literalism amounts to. I have left no philosopher without seeking to grasp the essence of his philosophy, and no theologian without striving to learn the aim of his theology and his disputation. I have left no Sufi without being eager to find the secret of his Sufism, and no devotee without watching for what his devotion comes to. And I have left no freethinking heretic who denies God without spying behind him to discover the causes of his boldness in his denial and his heresy.note

Then I knew that whatever I do not know in this way, and am not certain of with this kind of certainty, is knowledge that cannot be trusted and offers no safety. And any knowledge that offers no safety is not certain knowledge.

So I said: Trust in sense data has collapsed as well. Perhaps, then, the only trustworthy truths are the truths of reason that are first principles. Examples are our saying that ten is more than three, that affirmation and denial cannot both hold of one and the same thing, and that one and the same thing cannot be both originated and eternal, existent and non-existent, necessary and impossible. But the sense data said: How can you be sure that your trust in rational truths is not like your trust in sense data? You used to trust me. Then the judge of reason came and proved me false, and but for the judge of reason you would have gone on believing me. So perhaps beyond the perception of reason there is another judge. If he appeared, he would prove reason false in its judgment, just as the judge of reason appeared and proved the senses false in theirs. That such a perception has not appeared does not show that it is impossible.

When these thoughts came to me and struck sparks in my soul, I looked for a cure, but none came easily. For they could be driven off only by a proof, and a proof can be set up only by combining first principles. If these are not granted, no proof can be constructed.

He said: “It is a light that God Most High casts into the heart.” He was asked: “And what is its sign?” He said: “Withdrawing from the abode of delusion and turning to the abode of eternity.” It is of this light that he (God bless him and grant him peace) said: “God Most High created creatures in darkness, then sprinkled on them some of His light.”

It is from that light that unveiling must be sought. That light gushes forth from the divine generosity at certain times, and one must watch for it. As he (God bless him and grant him peace) said: “In the days of your time your Lord sends breaths of grace, so put yourselves in their way.”

The point of these accounts is that one should put the utmost earnestness into the search, until one ends up seeking what is not to be sought. For first principles are not sought: they are present, and what is present, if sought, is lost and hidden. Whoever seeks what is not to be sought cannot be accused of falling short in seeking what is to be sought.

When God cured me of this illness, by His grace and the breadth of His generosity, I found that the kinds of seekers came down to four groups: 1. The theologians, who claim to be the people of judgment and reflection. 2. The Batinis, who claim to be the party of taʿlīm and to have the special privilege of drawing knowledge from the infallible imam. 3. The philosophers, who claim to be the people of logic and demonstration (burhān). 4. The Sufis, who claim to be the elite of the divine presence and the people of direct vision and unveiling.note

I said to myself: The truth does not lie outside these four kinds. These are the ones who travel the paths of seeking the truth. If the truth has escaped them, no hope of grasping it remains. For there is no hope of going back to taqlīd once one has left it, since it is a condition of someone who follows authority that he does not know he is doing so. Once he knows it, the glass of his taqlīd is shattered. It is a break that cannot be mended, a crack that cannot be joined by patching and piecing, unless the glass is melted in the fire and fashioned anew.

So I hastened to travel these paths and to examine thoroughly what these groups had to offer. I began with kalām, turned second to the way of philosophy, third to the teaching of the Batinis, and fourth to the way of the Sufis.

I began, then, with kalām. I mastered it and understood it, studied the books of its most rigorous practitioners, and wrote in it what I wished to write. I found it a science that achieved its own aim but not mine. Its aim is only to preserve the creed of the people of the Sunna for the people of the Sunna and to guard it against the confusion sown by the innovators. For God Most High sent down to His servants, through the tongue of His Messenger, a creed that is the truth. It contains what is good for them in their religion and their worldly life, as the Quran and the hadith make known. Then Satan cast into the whisperings of the innovators things contrary to the Sunna. They harped on these things and all but threw the true creed into confusion for those who held it. So God Most High brought into being the party of the theologians and moved them to defend the Sunna with ordered argument. This argument exposes the deceptions of the innovators and their novelties, which run contrary to the transmitted Sunna. That is how kalām and its practitioners arose.note

My purpose now is to tell of my own state, not to reproach those who sought a cure in kalām. For remedies differ as illnesses differ. How many a remedy benefits one patient and harms another!

· What it amounts to. · What in it is blameworthy and what is not. · For what views its proponent is to be declared an unbeliever, and for what not. · What in it is innovation and what is not. · An account of what the philosophers stole from the words of the people of truth. · An account of what they mixed with the words of the people of truth, so as to pass off their falsehood along with it. · How it happens that people refuse that truth mixed with falsehood and souls recoil from it. · How pure truth is to be extracted from the counterfeit and base coin in everything they say.note

After finishing with kalām, I began on philosophy. I knew for certain that no one can recognize what is unsound in any science unless he grasps that science to its furthest reach. He must equal the most learned of its practitioners in its foundations, then go beyond him and surpass his rank, so that he discovers depths and pitfalls that the master of the science himself has not discovered. Only then can what he claims about its unsoundness be true. And I had seen no one among the scholars of Islam devote his care and his energy to that.

The books of the theologians, where they busied themselves with refuting the philosophers, contained nothing of the philosophers’ own words except obscure, scattered phrases, plainly contradictory and unsound. These would not be expected to deceive an ordinary person of sound mind, let alone someone who lays claim to the subtleties of the sciences. So I knew that refuting a doctrine before understanding it and grasping its essence is shooting in the dark. I rolled up my sleeves and set about acquiring that science from books, by reading alone, without the help of a teacher. I applied myself to it in the hours left free from writing and teaching in the religious sciences. All the while I was burdened with teaching and instructing three hundred students in Baghdad.

Through reading alone, in these stolen hours, God Most High (glory be to Him) let me reach the furthest limit of their sciences in less than two years. Then, once I had understood it, I kept on reflecting on it for nearly a year. I went back over it again and again, probing its pitfalls and its depths. In the end I came to know, beyond any doubt, the deception and the confusion, the truth and the illusion in it.

Hear now my account of them and of what their sciences amount to. I found them to be of several kinds, and their sciences to fall into several divisions. For all their many kinds, the stain of unbelief and godlessness clings to them. Yet between the ancient and the most ancient of them, and between the later and the earliest, there is a great difference in how far they stand from the truth or how near they come to it.

Know that, for all their many sects and different doctrines, they fall into three divisions: the materialists, the naturalists and the theists.

The first kind: the materialists. They are a party of the most ancient philosophers who denied the Maker who governs the world, the Knowing, the Powerful. They claimed that the world has always existed as it is, of itself, without a maker. Animals have always come from sperm and sperm from animals; so it was, and so it will be forever. These are the heretics.note

The second kind: the naturalists. They are people who devoted much study to the world of nature and to the wonders of animals and plants, and went deeply into the anatomy of animals’ organs. In them they saw such wonders of God Most High’s handiwork and such marvels of His wisdom that they were compelled to acknowledge a wise Creator who knows the ends and purposes of things. No one studies anatomy and the wonderful uses of the organs without gaining this necessary knowledge of the perfect design of the builder who built the animal frame, above all the human frame. But because of their many studies of nature, these people found that the balance of the temperament had a great effect in sustaining the powers of animals. So they supposed that the rational power in man also depends on his temperament, and that it ceases when his temperament ceases and passes out of existence. Then, once it no longer exists, it is inconceivable, as they claimed, that what no longer exists should be brought back.note

These too are heretics, because the root of faith is faith in God and the Last Day. These people denied the Last Day, even though they believed in God and His attributes.

The third kind: the theists. They are the later philosophers, such as Socrates, who was the teacher of Plato, and Plato, who was the teacher of Aristotle. It was Aristotle who ordered logic for them and refined the sciences for them. He set out precisely what had not been set out precisely before and brought to maturity what had been raw in their sciences. All of them together refuted the first two kinds, the materialists and the naturalists. In exposing their disgraceful views they said enough to spare others the trouble: “God spared the believers the fighting,” through their fighting among themselves. Then Aristotle refuted Plato and Socrates and the theists who came before them, and his refutation was so unsparing that he disowned them all. Yet he too kept remnants of their vile unbelief and innovation, which he did not manage to shake off. So they must be declared unbelievers, and so must their followers among the Muslim philosophers, such as Avicenna, al-Farabi and others. That said, none of the Muslim philosophers took on the transmission of Aristotle’s science as these two men did.note

Know that their sciences, with respect to the purpose we are pursuing, fall into six divisions: mathematics, logic, physics, metaphysics, politics and ethics.

1. Mathematics deals with arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, the science of the configuration of the world. None of it touches on religious matters, either to deny or to affirm them. Rather, these are demonstrated matters that cannot be denied once they are understood and known. Yet two dangers have arisen from it. The first is that whoever studies it marvels at its subtleties and at the clarity of its proofs. On that account he forms a good opinion of the philosophers and supposes that all their sciences are as clear and as firmly demonstrated as this one. Then he hears the common talk about their unbelief, their denial of God and their disdain for the Law, and he becomes an unbeliever by sheer taqlīd, saying: “If religion were true, it would not have escaped these people, given how precise they are in this science!” Once he has learned by hearsay of their unbelief and denial, he concludes that the truth lies in denying and rejecting religion. How many I have seen who stray from the truth on this pretext, with nothing else to support them!note

This is a great danger, and because of it everyone who plunges into those sciences must be held back. Even though they do not bear on religion, they are among the starting points of the philosophers’ sciences, so their harm and their ill omen spread to the student. Few plunge into them without being stripped of religion and having the bridle of piety slip from their heads.

The second danger arose from a friend of Islam who was ignorant. He thought religion should be defended by rejecting every science attributed to the philosophers. So he rejected all their sciences and claimed they were ignorant in them. He even rejected what they say about solar and lunar eclipses and claimed that it contradicted the Law. When this reached the ears of someone who knew those things by conclusive demonstration, he did not doubt his demonstration. Instead he came to believe that Islam is built on ignorance and on rejecting conclusive demonstration, and his love of philosophy and his hatred of Islam grew. Great indeed is the crime against religion committed by whoever thinks that Islam is defended by rejecting these sciences. Nothing in the Law touches on these sciences, whether to deny or to affirm, and nothing in these sciences touches on religious matters. Consider his saying (God bless him and grant him peace): “The sun and the moon are two of the signs of God Most High. They are not eclipsed for anyone’s death or life, so when you see that, hasten to the remembrance of God Most High and to prayer.”

There is nothing in this that requires rejecting the science of calculation, which makes known the courses of the sun and the moon and their conjunction or opposition in a particular way. As for the saying attributed to him (peace be upon him), “But when God manifests Himself to a thing, it submits to Him,” this addition is not found in the sound collections at all. This, then, is the verdict on mathematics and on the danger that comes from it.note

2. As for logic, none of it touches religion, either to deny or to affirm. It is the study of the methods of proof and of syllogisms, of the conditions for the premises of a demonstration and how they are combined, and of the conditions for a correct definition and how it is ordered. It teaches that knowledge is either conception, which is reached through definition, or assent, which is reached through demonstration. There is nothing in this that ought to be rejected. It is of the same kind as what the theologians and those who reflect on proofs have set out. The philosophers differ from them only in their expressions and technical terms, and in greater thoroughness in their definitions and subdivisions. An example of their discourse on it is their saying: If it is established that every A is B, it follows that some B is A. That is, if it is established that every man is an animal, it follows that some animal is a man. They express this by saying that a universal affirmative converts into a particular affirmative.

3. Physics (the natural sciences) investigates the world of the heavens and their stars, and the simple bodies beneath them, such as water, air, earth and fire. It also investigates the composite bodies, such as animals, plants and minerals, and the causes of their change, transformation and mixture. This is like medicine’s investigation of the human body, its principal and subordinate organs, and the causes that alter its constitution. Religion does not require us to reject medicine, and in the same way it does not require us to reject this science, except on certain specific questions, which we have set out in our book The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahāfut al-falāsifa). Any other points on which we must disagree with them will, on reflection, turn out to fall under these. The root of them all is that you should know that nature is subject to God Most High. It does not act by itself; it is used by its Creator. The sun, the moon, the stars and the natures are subject to His command, and none of them acts by itself or of itself.note

4. Metaphysics is where most of their errors lie. Here they could not meet the conditions for demonstration (burhān) that they had laid down in logic, and so they disagreed among themselves a great deal. Aristotle’s doctrine on these matters, as transmitted by al-Farabi and Avicenna, comes close to the views of the Muslims. But all their errors come down to twenty points. On three of them they must be declared unbelievers, and on seventeen they must be declared heretical innovators. We wrote The Incoherence to refute their doctrine on these twenty questions.

On the three questions they disagreed with all Muslims. 1. They say that bodies will not be raised at the resurrection. Only disembodied spirits are rewarded and punished, and the rewards and punishments are spiritual, not bodily. They were right to affirm the spiritual ones, for these are real too. But they spoke falsely in denying the bodily ones, and in what they said they disbelieved in the Law.

2. Another is their saying that “God Most High knows universals but not particulars.” This too is plain unbelief. The truth is that “not an atom’s weight escapes Him in the heavens or on earth.”note

3. Another is their doctrine that the world is eternal and without beginning. No Muslim has ever held any of these views.

As for the rest, such as their denial of the attributes, and their saying that God knows by His essence and not by a knowledge added to His essence, and the like, their doctrine here is close to that of the Muʿtazilites, and the Muʿtazilites need not be declared unbelievers for such things. In our book The Decisive Criterion for Distinguishing Islam from Heresy (Fayṣal al-tafriqa bayna l-Islām wa-l-zandaqa) we have shown how wrong it is to rush to declare people unbelievers for everything that differs from one’s own doctrine.note

5. Politics: everything they say about it comes down to practical maxims concerned with worldly affairs and the government of rulers. They took these from the scriptures God revealed to the prophets and from the wise sayings handed down from the prophets of old (peace be upon them).

6. Ethics: everything they say about it comes down to listing the qualities and traits of the soul, naming their genera and species, and describing how to treat and struggle against them. They took this from the words of the Sufis. These are godly people who persevere in remembering God Most High, in opposing their desires, and in traveling the path to God Most High by turning away from the pleasures of this world. In their spiritual struggle the traits and faults of the soul, and the flaws in its actions, were unveiled to them, and they spoke of these openly. The philosophers took them and mixed them into their own discourse, using them as an ornament to help sell their falsehoods. In their time, indeed in every age, there has been a group of such godly people. God, glory be to Him, never leaves the world without them, for they are the pegs of the earth: through their blessings mercy comes down on the people of the earth. So the report has it, where the Prophet (God bless him and grant him peace) said: “Through them you are given rain, through them you are given your provision, and of them were the Companions of the Cave.”note

Such people existed in times past as well, as the Quran declares. When the philosophers mixed the words of prophecy and the words of the Sufis into their books, two dangers arose: one for the person who accepts them, and one for the person who rejects them. 1. The danger for the one who rejects them is great. A group of feeble minds supposed that, since those words are recorded in the philosophers’ books and mixed with their falsehoods, they should be shunned and never mentioned, and that anyone who mentions them should be condemned. They had first heard these words only from the philosophers, so it came into their feeble minds that the words were false because the one who said them was in the wrong. They are like someone who hears a Christian say, “There is no god but God; Jesus is the Messenger of God,” and rejects it, saying, “That is what Christians say.” He does not pause long enough to consider whether the Christian is an unbeliever because of this statement or because he denies the prophethood of Muhammad (peace be upon him)! If he is an unbeliever only because of that denial, then one should not disagree with him on anything else that is true in itself and does not make him an unbeliever, even if he too holds it to be true.

By my life! Most people think themselves clever and expert, perfect in intellect and fully equipped to tell truth from falsehood and guidance from error. So the door must be shut firmly: everyone must be warned off reading the books of those in error, as far as possible. For even if they escape the danger just described, they will by no means escape the second one, which we shall describe next.

Objections have been raised against some of the statements scattered through our writings on the secrets of the religious sciences. They came from a group whose inner grasp of the sciences is not firm and whose insight has not opened onto the furthest aims of the various doctrines. They claimed that those statements belong to the ancient philosophers. Yet some of them are my own ideas—and it is not unlikely that one hoof should fall where another has trodden. Some are found in books of the Law, and most, in substance, are found in the books of the Sufis.

But suppose they were found only in the philosophers’ books. If a statement is rational in itself, supported by demonstration, and not contrary to the Book and the Sunna (the Prophet’s practice), why should it be shunned and abandoned? If we opened this door and went so far as to shun every truth that first occurred to someone in the wrong, we would have to shun a great deal of truth. We would have to shun a whole number of verses of the Quran, reports of the Messenger (God bless him and grant him peace), stories of the early Muslims, and sayings of the sages and the Sufis. For the author of the Brethren of Purity cited them in his book as evidence, using them to lure the hearts of fools into his falsehood. In the end those in the wrong would pull the truth out of our hands simply by placing it in their books.note

2. The second danger is the danger of acceptance. Someone who reads their books, such as the Brethren of Purity and others, sees the prophetic wisdom and the Sufi sayings they have mixed into their discourse. He may approve of these, accept them and think well of them. Then he hastens to accept the falsehoods mixed in with them, because of the good opinion he formed of what he saw and approved. That is a kind of luring into falsehood.

Because of this danger, people must be warned off reading their books, for the treachery and peril in them. Just as someone who cannot swim must be kept away from slippery riverbanks, people must be kept from reading those books. Just as children must be kept from touching snakes, ears must be kept from muddled words. A snake-charmer must not touch a snake in front of his small child if he knows the child will copy him and think himself as capable. He must warn the child off by being cautious himself and not touching it in front of him. The firmly grounded scholar must act in the same way. And when the skilled snake-charmer takes a snake, tells the antidote from the poison, extracts the antidote and renders the poison harmless, he has no right to withhold the antidote from someone who needs it.

That is as much as we wished to say about the danger and the harm of philosophy.

Then, when I had finished with the science of philosophy—acquiring it, understanding it, and exposing what is false in it—I realized that this too did not fully meet my aim. Reason cannot, on its own, grasp every question or lift the veil from every difficulty. Meanwhile the party of taʿlīm had sprung up, and people everywhere were talking of their claim to know the meaning of things from the infallible imam who upholds the truth. So it occurred to me to investigate their teachings and see what they had in their quiver. Then, as it happened, a firm command reached me from the caliph’s court to write a book exposing the true nature of their doctrine. I could not refuse it, and it became an outward spur added to my inner motive. So I began by seeking out their books and collecting their teachings. Some newer statements of theirs had also reached me, the product of minds of our own time and not in the familiar manner of their predecessors.note

What Ahmad ibn Hanbal said is right, but only for a specious argument that has not spread or become well known. Once it has spread, it must be answered, and it cannot be answered without first being stated. True, one should not invent for them a specious argument they have not themselves produced, and I did not do that. I had heard the argument from one of my companions who used to visit me, after he had joined them and adopted their doctrine. He told me that they laughed at the writings of those who wrote refutations of them, because those authors had not yet understood their argument. Then he set out the argument and reported it from them. I was not content to have it thought that I had overlooked the core of their argument, so I included it; nor to have it thought that I had heard it and not understood it, so I set it out in full.

The point is that I set out their specious argument as fully as possible, and then showed its unsoundness with all the force of demonstration.

The upshot is that these people have nothing to show and their talk has no substance. Were it not for the poor support of the ignorant friend, that innovation, weak as it is, would never have reached this level. But intense partisanship led the defenders of the truth to drag out the dispute with them over the premises of their argument and to contradict them in everything they said. So they contradicted their claim of “the need for teaching and a teacher,” and their claim that “not just any teacher will do; there must be an infallible teacher.” Their argument for the need for teaching and a teacher came out looking strong, and the position of those who denied it looked weak. Some people were taken in by this. They thought it came from the strength of their doctrine and the weakness of their opponents’, not understanding that it came from the weakness of the defender of the truth and his ignorance of how to go about it. The right course is to acknowledge the need for a teacher, and that the teacher must be infallible—but our infallible teacher is Muhammad (God bless him and grant him peace). If they say, “He is dead,” we say, “And your teacher is hidden.” If they say, “Our teacher has taught the missionaries and sent them out through the lands, and he awaits their return to him if they disagree or some difficulty perplexes them,”

There remains their question: “How do you judge what you have not heard? By an explicit text, when you have not heard one? Or by independent judgment and opinion, which is exactly where disagreement is to be expected?” We say: “We do what Muʿadh did when the Messenger of God (peace be upon him) sent him to Yemen: we judge by the text where there is a text, and by independent judgment where there is none.” Indeed, we do just what their own missionaries do when they are far from the imam in distant lands. Such a missionary cannot judge by text, for finite texts cannot cover the infinite cases that arise. Nor can he go back to the imam’s city for every case: by the time he has traveled there and back, the person who asked for a ruling will have died, and the benefit of going back will be lost. Someone who is unsure of the direction of prayer (the qibla) has no way but to pray by his own judgment; if he traveled to the imam’s city to learn the qibla, the time of prayer would pass. So prayer facing away from the qibla is valid when it rests on one’s best estimate. And it is said: “Whoever errs in independent judgment has one reward, and whoever is right has two.”note

So the prophets and the imams, of necessity, sent people back to independent judgment, knowing that they might err. The Messenger of God (God bless him and grant him peace) even said: “I judge by what is apparent, and God takes charge of what is hidden.” That is: I judge by the most likely opinion formed from the witnesses’ testimony, and they may be mistaken. If even the prophets had no way to be safe from error in such matters of judgment, how can anyone hope for it?

Here they raise two questions. The first is this: “Even if that holds for matters of independent judgment, it does not hold for the foundations of belief, since whoever errs there is not excused. So how is one to reach the truth about them?” I say: “The foundations of belief are contained in the Book and the Sunna. As for the details beyond that, and the matters in dispute, the truth about them is known by weighing them on the Just Balance. These are the balances God Most High mentioned in His Book. They are five, and I have set them out in my book The Just Balance (al-Qisṭās al-mustaqīm).”note

this is their second question. I say: “First, this can be turned back against you. When you call this bewildered man to yourself, he will say: ‘What makes you more deserving than your opponents, when most scholars disagree with you?’ I wonder how you would answer! Would you answer by saying, ‘My imam has been designated by an explicit text’? Who would believe your claim of a designating text, when he has not heard the text from the Messenger? He hears only your claim, while the scholars are unanimous in calling it your invention and a lie.note

The trouble arose only from some weak people who debated them and busied themselves not with turning the argument back on them but with answering it. That takes a long discussion and does not quickly reach people’s understanding, so it is no good for silencing an opponent. If someone says, “This is turning the argument back; is there an answer to it?” I say: “Yes. The answer is this. If the bewildered man says, ‘I am bewildered,’ without specifying the question he is bewildered about, he is told: ‘You are like a sick man who says, “I am sick,” without specifying his illness, and asks for a cure. He is told that no cure exists for illness in general, only for a particular illness—a headache, diarrhea or some other.’

My aim now is not to show the unsoundness of their doctrine, for I have done that elsewhere. I did it first in al-Mustaẓhirī; second in The Proof of the Truth (Ḥujjat al-ḥaqq), an answer to arguments of theirs put to me in Baghdad; third in The Dispute Set Out in Detail (Mufaṣṣal al-khilāf), in twelve chapters, an answer to arguments put to me in Hamadan; fourth in The Scroll (al-Daraj), laid out in tables, which deals with feeble arguments of theirs put to me in Tus; and fifth in The Just Balance, a self-standing book whose aim is to set out the balance of knowledge and to show that whoever masters it has no need of the infallible imam.note

My aim, rather, is to show that these people have nothing of the healing that rescues one from the darkness of opinions. Quite apart from their inability to prove who the imam is, we have often gone along with them. We granted the need for teaching and for an infallible teacher, and that he is the one they have designated. Then we asked them about the knowledge they had learned from this infallible one, and put difficulties to them. They did not understand them, let alone solve them! When they were stumped, they referred us to the hidden imam and said, “One must travel to him.” The wonder is that they wasted their lives seeking the teacher and boasting of having found him, and learned nothing at all from him. They are like someone smeared with filth who wears himself out looking for water and then, having found it, does not use it, and stays smeared with foulness.

Some of them claimed to have some of this knowledge, and what they offered came down to bits of the feeble philosophy of Pythagoras. He was one of the most ancient of the ancients, and his doctrine is the feeblest of all philosophical doctrines. Aristotle refuted him, and indeed found his words feeble and contemptible. It is what is related in the book of the Brethren of Purity, and in truth it is the dregs of philosophy.

How strange, then, that someone should toil all his life to acquire knowledge and then be content with such feeble, worthless knowledge, thinking he has reached the furthest goals of the sciences! These people too we tested, and we probed them outside and in. What they amounted to was luring ordinary people and weak minds by showing the need for a teacher, and by arguing against those who denied the need for teaching with strong, silencing words. But when someone agreed with them on the need for a teacher and said, “Produce his knowledge and let us benefit from his teaching!”, the man stopped short and said: “Now that you have granted me this, go and seek it; this much was all I intended.” For he knew that if he went any further he would be exposed and unable to solve the slightest difficulty—indeed, unable even to understand it, let alone answer it.

This, then, is the truth of their condition. “Test them and you will come to loathe them”: once we had tested them, we washed our hands of them as well.note

When I had finished with these sciences, I turned my whole attention to the way of the Sufis. I knew that their way is completed only by both knowledge and practice. The substance of their knowledge is to cut through the obstacles the soul puts in the way and to cleanse oneself of its blameworthy traits and vile qualities. By this one arrives at emptying the heart of everything but God Most High and adorning it with the remembrance of God.note

So I knew with certainty that they are masters of states, not purveyors of words, and that whatever can be acquired by way of knowledge I had already acquired. What remained could not be reached by listening and study, only by tasting and by walking the path. Now, from the sciences I had practiced and the paths I had followed in searching through the two kinds of science, the religious and the rational, I had already gained a certain faith in God Most High, in prophecy and in the Last Day.

These three foundations of faith had become firmly rooted in my soul, not through any one specific, carefully formulated proof, but through causes, indications and experiences whose details are beyond counting.

It had also become clear to me that I could have no hope of happiness in the hereafter except through fear of God and restraining the soul from its desires. The head of all this is to cut the heart’s ties to this world by withdrawing from the abode of delusion, turning back to the abode of eternity, and devoting oneself to God Most High with all one’s resolve. And this cannot be achieved except by turning away from rank and wealth, and fleeing from distractions and attachments.

Then I considered my circumstances, and there I was, immersed in attachments that had closed in on me from every side. I considered my activities—the best of them being teaching and instruction—and found that in them I was devoted to sciences that were neither important nor of any use on the way to the hereafter.

Then I reflected on my intention in teaching, and found that it was not purely for the sake of God Most High. What drove and moved it was the pursuit of rank and the spread of my fame. So I became certain that I stood “on the brink of a crumbling bank”, and that I was already on the verge of the Fire unless I set about putting my affairs right.note

So I kept thinking this over for some time, while I still had the freedom to choose. One day I would firmly resolve to leave Baghdad and be free of those circumstances; the next day I would undo my resolve. I would put one foot forward and draw the other back. No sooner did a sincere desire to seek the hereafter arise in me in the morning than the army of appetite charged against it, and by evening it had cooled. The appetites of this world were dragging me with their chains to stay, while the herald of faith was calling out: “Away! Away! Only a little of your life remains, and a long journey lies before you. All the knowledge and all the work you are engaged in are mere show and illusion! If you do not prepare for the hereafter now, when will you prepare? If you do not cut these ties now, when will you cut them?” At that the impulse would be roused, and my resolve would be fixed on escape and flight.

Then Satan would return and say: “This is a passing state; beware of giving in to it, for it will soon fade. If you yield to it and abandon this broad prestige, this well-ordered standing free of trouble and vexation, this unchallenged authority untouched by any rival’s dispute, your soul may well look back on it with longing, and it will not be easy for you to return.”

Then, when I felt my helplessness and my power of choice had collapsed entirely, I took refuge in God Most High as one in dire need who has no other recourse. He who “answers the one in distress when he calls on Him” answered me, and made it easy for my heart to turn away from rank and wealth, family, children and companions. I made a show of resolving to set out for Mecca, while privately planning a journey to Syria, for fear that the caliph and all my companions would learn of my resolve to settle in Syria. So I contrived, with subtle stratagems, to leave Baghdad, resolved never to return to it. I made myself a target for all the religious leaders of Iraq, for there was none among them who could allow that there might be a religious reason for abandoning the position I held. They thought it was the highest post in religion; that was the extent of their knowledge.note

Then people became confused in their conjectures. Those far from Iraq thought it was because I feared something from the authorities. But those close to the authorities saw how insistently they clung to me and pressed themselves upon me, and how I turned away from them and paid no attention to what they said; so they would say: “This is a matter from heaven. Its only cause is an evil eye that has struck the people of Islam and the company of the learned.”

So I left Baghdad. I gave away what wealth I had, keeping only what would suffice for myself and sustenance for the children. I allowed myself this on the grounds that the wealth of Iraq is set aside for the public good, being an endowment for the Muslims. I have seen nowhere in the world any wealth more proper for a scholar to take for his family.note

Then I entered Syria and stayed there nearly two years, with no occupation but seclusion and retreat, discipline and spiritual struggle. I devoted myself to purifying the soul, refining my character and cleansing the heart for the remembrance of God Most High, as I had learned from the books of the Sufis. For a time I would stay in retreat in the mosque of Damascus, climbing its minaret for the whole day and locking its door behind me.note

Then I traveled from there to Jerusalem, where every day I would enter the Rock and lock its door behind me.note

Then the call of the duty of pilgrimage stirred in me, together with the wish to draw on the blessings of Mecca and Medina and to visit the Messenger of God (God bless him and grant him peace), after completing my visit to the Friend of God (God’s blessings and peace be upon him). So I traveled to the Hijaz.note

Then various concerns, and the pleas of my children, drew me back to my homeland, and I returned to it, after having been the last person in the world one would expect to return there. There too I chose seclusion, eager for retreat and for cleansing the heart for remembrance.note

But the events of the time, the concerns of my family and the necessities of making a living altered the course of my purpose and troubled the purity of my retreat. My state became clear only at scattered times. Even so, I did not give up hope of it: obstacles would push me away from it, and I would return to it.

I continued like this for about ten years. In the course of these retreats, things were unveiled to me that cannot be counted or fully set out. The portion I will mention, so that others may benefit from it, is this: I came to know with certainty that it is the Sufis above all who travel the path of God Most High, that their conduct is the best of conduct, their way the most correct of ways, and their character the purest of characters. Indeed, if the intellect of the intelligent, the wisdom of the wise and the knowledge of those scholars who grasp the secrets of the Law were all brought together to change anything in their conduct and character and replace it with something better, they would find no way to do so. For all their movements and their stillness, outward and inward, are drawn from the light of the niche of prophecy; and beyond the light of prophecy there is no light on the face of the earth by which one may be illumined.note

In short, what can anyone say about a way whose purification—its first condition—is to purify the heart entirely of all that is other than God Most High; whose key, corresponding to the opening consecration of the prayer, is the heart’s complete absorption in the remembrance of God; and whose end is complete passing away in God? And that is its end only relative to its beginnings, which fall almost within the scope of choice and effort. In truth, it is the beginning of the way; everything before it is like an entrance hall for one traveling toward it.note

From the very beginning of the way, unveilings and direct visions begin, so that while awake they see angels and the spirits of the prophets, hear voices from them and gain benefits from them. Then the state rises from seeing forms and images to degrees that the range of speech is too narrow to hold: anyone who tries to express them will find that his words contain an evident error he cannot avoid.

In short, it ends in a closeness that one group almost imagines to be indwelling, another union, and another arrival—and all of this is an error. We have explained the nature of the error in our book The Noblest Aim (al-Maqṣad al-asnā). Rather, one who has been in that state should say no more than: “Something happened—what, I shall not mention; so think the best, and do not ask for the story!”note

In short, whoever has not been granted any of this by tasting grasps nothing of the reality of prophecy but its name. The wonders of the friends of God are, in truth, the beginnings of the prophets. That was the first state of the Messenger of God (God bless him and grant him peace), when he went out to Mount Hira, where he would be alone with his Lord and worship, so that the Arabs said: “Muhammad has fallen in love with his Lord!”note

This is a state that one who walks its path verifies by tasting. One who has not been granted tasting may become certain of it through experience and hearsay, if he keeps much company with them, until he understands it with certainty from the evidence of their states. Whoever sits with them gains this faith from them, for they are the people whose companion is never wretched. And whoever has not been granted their company, let him know its possibility with certainty through the evidence of demonstration, as we have set out in the book The Wonders of the Heart (ʿAjāʾib al-qalb), one of the books of The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn).note

Verification by demonstration is knowledge; being in that very state is tasting; and acceptance, from hearsay and experience, with a good opinion of others, is faith. These are three degrees: “God will raise by degrees those of you who believe and those who have been given knowledge.”note

Beyond these are ignorant people who deny the very basis of all this. They marvel at such talk, listen and mock, and say: “How strange! How they rave!” Of them God Most High said: “Among them are some who listen to you, but when they go out from your presence they say to those who have been given knowledge, ‘What was that he said just now?’ They are the ones whose hearts God has sealed, and they follow their own desires”—and He made them deaf and blinded their sight. Among the things that became clear to me by necessity from practicing their way is the true nature of prophecy and its special character. I must point out its basis, for the need for it is pressing.note

Know that the human substance, in its original disposition, was created empty and simple, with no knowledge of the worlds of God Most High. The worlds are many, and none can count them but God Most High, as He said: “None knows the hosts of your Lord but He.”note

It gains knowledge of the worlds only through perception. Each of the faculties of perception was created so that through it a human being might become acquainted with one world of existing things; by “worlds” we mean the kinds of existing things.

The first thing created in a human being is the sense of touch, by which he perceives certain kinds of existing things: heat and cold, moisture and dryness, softness and roughness, and so on. Touch is utterly incapable of perceiving colors and sounds; for touch they are as good as nonexistent.

Then the sense of sight is created for him, by which he perceives colors and shapes; this is the widest of the worlds of sensible things.

Then hearing is breathed into him, and he hears sounds and melodies.

Then taste is created for him, and so on until he passes beyond the world of sensible things. Then discernment is created in him, at around the age of seven. This is another of the stages of his existence: in it he perceives things beyond the world of sensible things, none of which is found in the world of the senses.

Then he rises to another stage, and reason is created for him, by which he perceives what is necessary, what is possible and what is impossible, and things not found in the stages before it.

Beyond reason there is another stage, in which another eye is opened, by which one sees the unseen, what will happen in the future, and other things from which reason is barred—just as the faculty of discernment is barred from perceiving the objects of reason, and the faculty of sense from the objects of discernment. And just as a child who has reached discernment, if the objects of reason were presented to him, would reject them and think them far-fetched, so some people of reason have rejected the objects of prophecy and thought them far-fetched. That is ignorance itself, for they have nothing to rely on except that this is a stage such a person has not reached, which does not exist for him, and so he supposes it does not exist in itself. A man born blind, had he not learned about colors and shapes through widespread report and hearsay, and were they described to him for the first time, would neither understand them nor accept them. God Most High has brought this close to His creatures by giving them a sample of the special character of prophecy, namely sleep. For the sleeper perceives the unseen that is to come, either plainly or clothed in an image whose meaning dream interpretation reveals.note

Doubt about prophecy may concern its possibility, its existence and actual occurrence, or its being found in a particular individual.

The proof of its possibility is its existence. The proof of its existence is that there are kinds of knowledge in the world that cannot conceivably be attained by reason, such as the sciences of medicine and astrology. Whoever investigates them knows by necessity that they can be grasped only by divine inspiration and help from God Most High; experiment offers no way to them. Some astrological judgments concern events that occur only once in a thousand years; how could that be attained by experiment? The same holds for the special properties of drugs. This demonstration makes it clear that there can be a way of perceiving these things that reason does not perceive, and that is what is meant by prophecy. Not that prophecy is only this: rather, perceiving this kind of thing, which lies outside the objects of reason, is one of the special properties of prophecy, and it has many others besides.note

As for the special properties of prophecy other than this, they are perceived only by tasting, through following the Sufi path. For I understood even this much only through a sample I was granted, namely sleep; without it I would not have believed it. If the Prophet has a special property of which you have no sample and which you do not understand at all, how can you believe in it? Assent comes only after understanding. That sample is attained at the beginnings of the Sufi path: through it one attains a kind of tasting, to the extent that it has been attained, and a kind of assent, by analogy with it, to what has not been attained. This one special property is enough for you to believe in the basis of prophecy.

If you come to doubt whether a particular individual is a prophet or not, certainty can be reached only by knowing his states, either by direct observation or by widespread report and hearsay. For once you know medicine and jurisprudence, you can recognize jurists and doctors by observing their states and hearing their words—and even if you have not seen them. Nor are you unable to know that al-Shafiʿi (may God have mercy on him) was a jurist and Galen a doctor, and to know it truly, not by taqlīd, following someone else’s authority, but by learning something of jurisprudence and medicine and reading their books and writings; then you attain necessary knowledge of their standing.note

When you have tested this in a thousand cases, in two thousand, in many thousands, you will attain necessary knowledge that you cannot dispute.

Seek certainty about prophecy by this path, then, and not from the turning of a staff into a serpent or the splitting of the moon. For if you consider such a thing on its own, without the countless accompanying indications, you may well think it is magic and illusion, or that it is God Most High leading people astray, for He “leads astray whom He wills and guides whom He wills.”note

Then you will be confronted with questions about miracles. If your faith rests on a well-ordered argument about how a miracle serves as proof, it will be broken by an equally ordered argument setting out difficulties and doubts against it. So let such extraordinary events be one of the proofs and indications within the whole of your reflection, until you attain necessary knowledge whose basis you cannot pinpoint. It is like someone told a piece of news by many people in a widespread report: he cannot say that his certainty comes from the words of any one of them; it comes from where he does not know, neither from outside the whole nor from any single individual. This is strong faith grounded in knowledge.

Tasting, however, is like seeing with your own eyes and taking a thing in your hand, and it is found only on the path of the Sufis.

This much about the true nature of prophecy is enough for the purpose I have in view now. I will explain later why it is needed.

Then, when I had persevered in seclusion and retreat for nearly ten years, it became clear to me by necessity in the course of that time, for reasons I cannot count—sometimes by tasting, sometimes by demonstrative knowledge, sometimes by the acceptance of faith—that a human being is made of a body and a heart. By “heart” I mean the reality of his spirit, which is the seat of the knowledge of God, not the flesh and blood that he shares with a corpse and a beast. The body has a health on which its happiness depends and a disease in which lies its ruin. The heart likewise has a health and soundness—and none will be saved “except one who comes to God with a sound heart”—and it has a disease in which lies its eternal ruin in the hereafter, as God Most High said: “In their hearts is a disease.” Ignorance of God is a deadly poison to it; disobeying God by following desire is the illness that sickens it; knowing God Most High is its life-giving antidote; and obeying Him by opposing desire is its healing remedy. There is no way to treat it, removing its disease and gaining its health, except by remedies, just as there is no way to treat the body except by them.note

In short, the prophets (peace be upon them) are the doctors for the diseases of hearts. The use and function of reason is only to make this known to us, to bear witness to prophecy by assenting to it, and against itself by confessing its inability to grasp what the eye of prophecy grasps. It has taken us by the hand and handed us over to prophecy, as the blind are handed over to their guides and bewildered patients to caring doctors. This far reason runs and reaches; it is barred from what lies beyond, except for understanding what the doctor imparts to it.

These are things we came to know, during the period of retreat and seclusion, with a necessity equivalent to direct vision.

Then we saw that people’s beliefs had grown slack—in the basis of prophecy, then in its true nature, then in acting on what prophecy had set out—and we verified how widespread this was among people. So I looked into the causes of people’s slackness and the weakness of their faith, and found that there were four: 1. a cause stemming from those who plunge into philosophy; 2. a cause stemming from those who plunge into the Sufi path; 3. a cause stemming from those who lay claim to taʿlīm, authoritative teaching; 4. a cause stemming from the conduct of those who are known among people as learned.

For some time I followed up individuals one by one, asking anyone who fell short in following the Law about his doubt, and probing his belief and his inmost thoughts. I would say to him: “Why do you fall short in it? If you believe in the hereafter and do not prepare for it, but sell it for this world, that is folly! You would not sell two for one, so how can you sell what has no end for a few numbered days? And if you do not believe, then you are an unbeliever! So see to yourself and seek faith, and look into the cause of your hidden unbelief—which is your doctrine inwardly and the cause of your boldness outwardly, even if you do not declare it, adorning yourself with faith and taking honor from mentioning the Law!”

One would say: “If this were something that had to be observed, the scholars would be the ones most bound to observe it. Yet So-and-so, famous among the eminent, does not pray; So-and-so drinks wine; So-and-so devours the revenues of endowments and the property of orphans; So-and-so lives on the sultan’s stipend and takes no care to avoid what is forbidden; So-and-so takes bribes for judging and for bearing witness!”—and so on, with others like them.

A second claims knowledge of Sufism and asserts that he has reached a level where he has risen above any need for worship!

A third makes excuses with another of the doubts of the antinomians! These are the ones who have strayed from Sufism.note

A fourth has met the party of taʿlīm, and says: “The truth is obscure and the way to it is hard; there is much disagreement about it, and no doctrine has a better claim than another. The proofs of reason contradict one another, so there is no trusting the opinion of those who reason. And the one who calls to taʿlīm makes arbitrary claims without proof. So how shall I give up certainty for doubt?”

A fifth says: “I don’t do this out of taqlīd. I have studied the science of philosophy, and I have grasped the true nature of prophecy: it comes down, in the end, to wisdom and the public good. The purpose of its acts of worship is to keep the common mass of people in check and to restrain them from killing and quarreling with one another and from giving free rein to their appetites. I am not one of the ignorant common people, that I should step into the confinement of religious obligation. I am one of the wise. I follow wisdom, I see clearly into it, and in it I have no need of following authority!”

This is the furthest reach of faith among those of them who have studied the doctrine of the theistic philosophers and learned it from the books of Avicenna and Abu Nasr al-Farabi. These are the people who wear Islam as an ornament.

You may even see one of them reciting the Quran, attending the congregations and the prayers, and praising the Law with his tongue, yet all the while he does not give up drinking wine and various kinds of depravity and debauchery! If he is asked, “If prophecy is not true, why do you pray?” he may answer, “To exercise the body, to keep to the custom of the townspeople, and to keep my wealth and my children safe!” Or he may say, “The Law is true, and prophecy is real!” Then he is asked, “So why do you drink wine?” and he answers, “Wine was forbidden only because it breeds enmity and hatred, and my wisdom guards me against that. I drink it to sharpen my mind.” Avicenna even went so far as to write in a testament of his that he had made a covenant with God Most High on such-and-such points: to honor the ordinances of the Law, not to fall short in the acts of religious worship, and not to drink for pleasure, but only as medicine and cure. So the furthest he got in purity of faith and commitment to worship was to make an exception of drinking wine for the sake of a cure.note

Such is the faith of those among them who lay claim to faith. A number of people have been taken in by them, and what deceived them further was the weakness of those who argued against them. For these opponents argued by attacking geometry, logic and other sciences whose truths the philosophers know by necessity, for the reason we explained earlier.

I saw that the various classes of people had grown weak in faith to this degree for these reasons. And I saw that I myself was ready to lay bare this confusion, so that exposing these people was easier for me than a drink of water, because I had delved so deeply into their sciences and their methods—I mean the methods of the Sufis, the philosophers, the party of taʿlīm, and those who pass themselves off as scholars. Then it flashed into my mind that this was a duty at this time, one that could not be avoided. What good would retreat and seclusion do you, when the disease had spread everywhere, the physicians themselves had fallen ill, and humankind stood on the brink of perdition? Then I said to myself: “When will you take up the task of lifting this gloom and confronting this darkness? This is an age of slackness, an era of falsehood. If you took up the work of calling people from their ways to the truth, the whole of this age would turn against you. How could you stand up to them, and how could you even live among them? That cannot be done without a favorable time and a pious, powerful ruler.”

So, between myself and God Most High, I allowed myself to remain in seclusion, excusing myself on the grounds that I was unable to make the truth prevail by argument. Then God Most High decreed that the ruler of the time should be moved to act of his own accord, not at anyone else’s prompting. He issued a binding order that I set out for Nishapur to remedy this slackness, and the order was so insistent that, had I persisted in refusing, it would have ended in estrangement. It occurred to me that the grounds for my dispensation had grown weak. What keeps you clinging to seclusion should not be laziness and ease, the wish to preserve your dignity and to shield yourself from people’s harm. You should not grant yourself a dispensation because dealing with people is hard. For God, glory be to Him, the Most High, says: “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Alif Lam Mim.note

And, mighty and majestic is He, He says: “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Ya Sin. By the wise Quran…” down to His words, “You can warn only the one who follows the Reminder and fears the Merciful, unseen.” I consulted a number of people who were masters of hearts and of direct vision about this, and they agreed in advising me to give up seclusion and leave my retreat. On top of this came many dreams of righteous people, reported again and again from many sources, testifying that this move was the beginning of good and right guidance, decreed by God, glory be to Him, at the head of this century. So hope grew firm, and a good opinion prevailed because of these testimonies—and God, glory be to Him, has promised to revive His religion at the head of every century. God Most High made the move to Nishapur easy, to take up this important task, in Dhu l-Qaʿda of the year 499 AH (AD 1106). I had left Baghdad in Dhu l-Qaʿda of the year 488 AH (AD 1095). So the period of seclusion came to eleven years.note

This is now my intention, my aim and my wish; God knows this of me. I seek to reform myself and others, and I do not know whether I shall reach my goal or be cut off before attaining my purpose. But I believe, with the faith of certainty and direct vision, that there is no power and no strength except in God, the High, the Mighty; that I did not move, but He moved me; that I did not act, but He made use of me. So I ask Him to reform me first and then to reform others through me; to guide me and then to guide others through me; to show me the truth as truth and grant me to follow it, and to show me falsehood as falsehood and grant me to avoid it.

Let us now return to the causes of weak faith we mentioned, and set out the way to guide these people and rescue them from their perils. As for those who claim to be bewildered by what they heard from the party of taʿlīm, their cure is what we set out in The Just Balance, and we will not lengthen this letter by repeating it.

As for the fancies of the antinomians, we have gathered their doubts under seven headings and exposed them in The Alchemy of Happiness (Kīmiyāʾ al-saʿāda).note

As for someone whose faith has been corrupted by the path of philosophy, to the point of denying the very basis of prophecy: we have explained the true nature of prophecy and that it necessarily exists, on the evidence that there is knowledge of the special properties of drugs, of the stars and so on. We put forward that preliminary discussion precisely for this purpose. We drew the proof from the special properties found in medicine and astrology because they belong to the philosophers’ own science. For every scholar of any branch of learning, such as astrology, medicine, natural science, magic and talismans, we can present an example from his own science as a demonstration of prophecy.

As for someone who affirms prophecy with his tongue but makes the ordinances of the Law conform to philosophical wisdom, he is in truth an unbeliever in prophecy. What he believes in is a sage born under a particular ascendant, whose ascendant required that he be followed; and that has nothing to do with prophecy. Rather, faith in prophecy means acknowledging that there is a stage beyond reason, in which an eye opens that perceives particular objects of perception from which reason is barred—just as hearing is barred from perceiving colors, sight from perceiving sounds, and all the senses from perceiving the objects of reason. If he does not admit that this is possible, we have already established a demonstration of its possibility, and indeed of its existence. If he does admit it, then he has conceded that there are things called special properties which the workings of reason do not even come near; indeed reason all but calls them false and judges them impossible. For a daniq’s weight of opium is a deadly poison, because its excessive coldness congeals the blood in the veins.note

4 9 2 / 3 5 7 / 8 1 6note

It is written on two pieces of cloth that water has never touched. The pregnant woman looks at them with her own eyes and places them under her feet, and the child at once hastens to come out. They have admitted that this is possible and have recorded it in The Wonders of Special Properties (ʿAjāʾib al-khawāṣṣ). It is a figure of nine cells, in which particular numerals are inscribed so that the sum of any one line is fifteen, whether you read it down the figure, across it or diagonally.

I wish I knew! How can someone believe that, and yet his mind has no room to accept that fixing the dawn prayer at two cycles, the noon prayer at four and the sunset prayer at three is due to special properties that philosophical reflection does not know? Their cause is the difference between these times, and such properties are grasped only by the light of prophecy. The strange thing is that if we changed the wording to the language of the astrologers, they would understand the difference between these times. We would say: “Doesn’t the judgment of a horoscope differ according to whether the sun is at mid-heaven, in the ascendant or in the descendant? So much so that on this basis they calculate, in their progressions, differences in treatment and variations in lifespans and appointed hours of death. Yet there is no difference between noon and the sun’s being at mid-heaven, nor between sunset and the sun’s being in the descendant. Is there any reason for believing the one and not the other?” None, except that he hears the one in the language of an astrologer, whose lies he may have found out a hundred times.note

I wish I knew! If someone’s mind has room to accept such oddities, and he is compelled to admit that they are special properties—knowledge of which was a miracle granted to some of the prophets—how can he deny the like when he hears it from a truthful prophet, supported by miracles, who was never once known to lie? Why has his mind no room for its possibility?

If a philosopher denies that such special properties are possible in the number of cycles of prayer, the stoning of the pillars, the number of essential rites of the Pilgrimage and the other acts of worship of the Law, he will find no difference at all between these and the special properties of drugs and stars. He may say: “I have tested some astrology and some medicine and found some of it true, so belief in it arose in my mind, and my sense that it was far-fetched, and my aversion to it, fell away from my heart. This I have not tested, so how am I to know that it exists and is real?” If you do grant that it is possible, I say: “You do not limit yourself to believing what you have tested. You have listened to the reports of those who tested things and followed them on authority. So listen to what the prophets say, for they tested and saw directly the truth in all that the Law brings. Follow their path, and you will grasp some of it by direct vision.”note

Moreover, I say: “Even if you have not tested it, your reason requires you absolutely to believe and follow. Suppose a man has come of age and has his wits, and has never experienced illness. He falls ill. He has a loving father, skilled in medicine, whose claim to medical knowledge he has heard ever since he came to understanding. His father mixes a medicine for him and says, ‘This is good for your illness and will cure you of your sickness.’ What does his reason require, if the medicine is bitter and foul-tasting: that he take it? Or that he call it a lie and say, ‘I can’t see how this medicine is suited to bringing about a cure, and I have not tested it!’? You would surely think him a fool if he did that! In the same way, people of insight think you a fool for hesitating!” If you say, “How am I to know the loving concern of the Prophet (God bless him and grant him peace) and his knowledge of this medicine?” I say: “And how did you know your father’s loving concern, when that is not something perceived by the senses? You knew it from the evident signs of his conduct and the evidence of his actions in all his comings and goings: a necessary knowledge about which you have no doubt.”

Whoever reflects on the sayings of the Messenger of God (God bless him and grant him peace), and on the reports of his concern to guide people and his gentleness in drawing them, with every kind of kindness and gentleness, toward better character and toward setting right their relations with one another—in short, toward whatever sets right their religion and their worldly life—will attain a necessary knowledge that his loving concern (God bless him and grant him peace) for his community is greater than a father’s loving concern for his child.

And when he reflects on the marvelous deeds that appeared at his hands, on the marvels of the unseen that the Quran told of through his tongue and that are told of in the reports, and on what he foretold about the end of time, which came to pass just as he foretold it, he will know by necessary knowledge that he reached the stage beyond reason, and that the eye was opened for him through which the unseen is unveiled—the unseen that only the elite perceive, and the things that reason does not grasp.

This, then, is the method for attaining necessary knowledge that the Prophet (God bless him and grant him peace) is truthful. So try it: meditate on the Quran and study the reports, and you will know it by seeing it for yourself.

This much is enough to awaken the would-be philosophers. We have mentioned it because it is so badly needed in this age.

As for the fourth cause—weak faith caused by the conduct of scholars—this disease is treated in three ways. The first is that you say: “The scholar who, you claim, consumes what is forbidden knows that it is forbidden just as you know that wine, pork and usury are forbidden—indeed, as you know that backbiting, lying and slander are forbidden. You know that, and you do it anyway, not because you lack faith that it is a sin, but because your appetite overpowers you. His appetite is like yours, and it has overpowered him as it has overpowered you. His knowledge of questions beyond this, which sets him apart from you, does not bring with it any greater restraint from this particular prohibited thing. How many people who believe in medicine cannot keep away from fruit and cold water, even though the physician has warned them against it! That does not show that these are harmless, or that belief in medicine is unsound. This is how the lapses of scholars are to be understood.”

The second is that the ordinary person should be told: “You should believe that the scholar has made his knowledge a treasure stored up for himself in the afterlife. He thinks his knowledge will save him and intercede for him, so that he will be treated leniently in his deeds on account of the merit of his knowledge. And if it is possible that his knowledge will be an additional argument against him, it is also possible that it will be an additional rank for him; that is possible. So even if he has abandoned good deeds, he can plead his knowledge. But you, ordinary person! If you look at him and abandon good deeds, when you yourself are devoid of knowledge, you will perish through your bad deeds with no one to intercede for you!”

The third, which is the truth of the matter, is this: the true scholar commits a sin only by way of a lapse, and never persists in sins at all. For true knowledge is what makes one know that sin is a deadly poison and that the afterlife is better than this world. Whoever knows that will not sell what is better for what is lesser.

This knowledge is not attained through the kinds of learning with which most people busy themselves. That is why such learning only makes them bolder in disobeying God Most High. True knowledge, however, increases its possessor in awe, fear and hope, and that stands between him and sins—except for the lapses from which no human being is free in moments of weakness, and these do not indicate weak faith. For the believer is often tested and often repents; he is far from persisting and being bent on sin.

This is what I wished to say in censure of philosophy and taʿlīm, of their dangers, and of the dangers of those who opposed them in the wrong way.

We ask God the Mighty to make us among those He has preferred and chosen, led to the truth and guided; inspired to remember Him so that they do not forget Him; protected from the evil of their own selves so that they prefer nothing to Him; and taken wholly for Himself so that they worship none but Him. May God bless our master Muhammad, his family and his companions, and grant them peace.