—listening that is satanic in nature—and he laid bare how radically it conflicts with listening to the Quran, treating the matter from many angles in numerous scholarly chapters and useful juristic discussions. In his earlier treatise Masʾalat al-Samāʿ and again in Ighāthat al-Lahfān he demonstrated the profound error of those who cling to it. He even composed several poems about them, describing them with precise and truthful strokes; among these is a poem of one hundred and thirty lines preserved in Ighāthat al-Lahfān (1/232), wherein he says:

They left realities and the sacred law behind,
Conforming to the outward ways of fools who stray.
They deemed contentious wrangling a “conquest,”
Obscene expressions a “mystic outburst,”
And charged ahead with the swagger of conceit.
They cast the Book of Allah behind their backs
As a traveler tosses aside a crust of stale bread.
They made audition a mount for their whims,
Went to extremes and voiced every absurdity:
“It is obedience; it is nearness; it is Sunnah!”—
Believing the words of that misguiding shaykh.
An old shaykh snared them through trickery
Until they answered the impostor’s call.
For his sake they abandoned the Quran, the reports,
And the early narrations, all of which testified to their error.
They judged that listening to poetry profits a youth more
From seven angles that grant him his desire.
By Allah, no enemy ever gained a triumph like this
Through men such as these—alas, what a bitter disappointment!