It is an incontrovertible principle of Islam that the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—never legislated for the righteous among his nation, its worshippers and ascetics, to gather for the purpose of listening to melodiously chanted verses accompanied by hand-clapping, stick-tapping, or the beating of a tambourine. Nor did he permit anyone—whether of the common people or the elite—to deviate, inwardly or outwardly, from following him and adhering to what came in the Book and the Wisdom.

Then the Shaykh ⦗573–576⦘ said:

Whoever is versed in the realities of the faith, the states of the hearts, their insights, tastes, and spiritual ecstasies, knows that listening to whistling and clapping brings no benefit whatsoever to the hearts; whatever slight gain might be imagined is far outweighed by the harm and corruption it carries. To the spirit it is what wine is to the body, producing in the soul the very effect strong drink produces in the stomach.

For that reason it bequeaths its devotees an intoxication greater than that of wine: they experience delight without discernment, just as the wine-drinker does—indeed, they attain even more and greater than what the wine-drinker attains. It diverts them from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer more than wine diverts them; it sows among them enmity and hatred more than wine—until they may kill one another without laying a hand on each other, but rather through what accompanies them of devils. Demonic states overtake them so that the devils descend upon them in those moments and speak on their tongues, just as a jinn speaks on the tongue of a possessed person: sometimes in speech resembling that of foreigners whose language is not understood—such as the tongues of the Turks, Persians, or others—while the very person possessed by the devil is a stranger to that language and cannot speak it at all; yet the utterance proceeds in the manner of the speech of