and you were to say to him, “Do you know Abū ʿImrān al-Fāsī?” He answers, “Yes.” Then you say, “Describe him for me.” (1) He replies, “He is a grocer in such-and-such a market and lives in Ceuta. Would he recognize me?” You answer, “No.”

“Now suppose you met another man and questioned him as you questioned the first. He says (2), ‘I know him; he teaches the religious sciences, issues legal rulings, and lives in the western quarter of al-Shamāṭ (3). Would he recognize me?’ You answer, ‘Yes.’

“In the same way, the unbeliever says that his Lord has a consort and a child, and that He is a corporeal being. He has therefore failed to know Allah and has not described Him with His true attributes, unlike the believer.”

They responded, “You have cured us!” They prayed for him and never again disputed the question.

I add: The polytheists, the People of the Book, and others acknowledged Allah—in the sense that they did not deny Him—and they knew that He is their Creator. Allah, Exalted is He, says: “If you were to ask them, ‘Who created them?’ they would surely reply, ‘Allah.’” [al-Zukhruf:87] And He says: “Their messengers said, ‘Is there any doubt about Allah, the Originator of the heavens and the earth?’” [Ibrāhīm:10]

Thus they did not deny the Creator or reject the Maker; rather, they recognized Him but were ignorant of His sanctified attributes and spoke about Him without knowledge. The believer, by contrast, knows his Lord through the attributes of perfection, negates from Him—generally—the marks of deficiency, believes in his Lord, and refrains from delving into what he does not know.

From this it becomes clear that the unbeliever knows Allah from one angle yet is ignorant of Him from many others. The prophets knew Allah—Exalted be He—and some of them had a more complete knowledge of Him than others. The friends of Allah likewise enjoy a good knowledge of Him, though it is below that of the prophets; after them come the learned believers, followed by the righteous who are beneath them.

People therefore differ in their knowledge of their Lord, just as their faith waxes and wanes. Likewise, the community varies in its faith in its Prophet and in its knowledge of him, in ranks—the highest of them in that regard is, for example, Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq, then a number