and that he will hold his Shiʿah to account on the Day of Resurrection, a doctrine that reached full maturity under Ḥasan al-Sabbah, leader of the Hashashin, in the fortress of Alamut.

Divine qualities then began to be ascribed to the Imams, to their propagandists, and to their appointed “gates”—a purely psychological response born of a love blended with the self-deception that serves as Satan’s mount.

For that reason people once asked Imam Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, “When will the Imam be raised up?”—meaning ʿAlī, may Allah be pleased with him. He replied, “He will be raised on the Day of Judgment, concerned solely with himself; before the Most Just of judges he will have no say regarding anyone else.”

Self-deception continued to evolve, and its ability to divert its owners from lawful deeds—while still masquerading as love—took on other guises. Shrines were erected over the graves of the Prophet’s Household and other righteous people in a distinctive style almost identical wherever one went; lamps were lit, incense burned, and animals sacrificed. Around them, profiteers installed themselves, spreading superstition, extorting money, and concocting every device that might inflame the soul’s yearning for the world of mysteries.

In truth, such behavior betrays an inability to act—a failure of the intellect to undertake that arduous journey by which one attains certainty about Allah. The soul therefore invented an easier source of conviction, purportedly descending from the unseen. All a person had to do was affirm belief in some hidden secret of the material world, and certainty regarding the unseen was, so it was claimed, already decreed for him—never to miss or bypass him.

Nor am I the first to say this. The eminent critic, Imam al-Ḥārith ibn Asad al-Muḥāsibī, treated the matter at length in his book Adab al-Nufūs 1, furnishing palpable proofs of the misguidance inherent in such love.