—whenever it manifests itself in any guise other than deeds that accord with what pleases Allah.

He illustrates the matter as follows: the hungry man loves food, and the thirsty man loves water. Yet the hungry is not content merely to have food set before him, nor the thirsty to hang a flask of water around his neck; each must actually eat and drink. If food and drink are brought within reach of the hungry and the thirsty yet neither one partakes, his claim to hunger or thirst is false.

Likewise, whoever claims to love Allah and His Messenger is lying if he does not act in accordance with the command of Allah and His Messenger.

This very truth is plain in worldly affairs. When someone loves another person, he strains every nerve to please him and does whatever the beloved wants until he is satisfied.

How then, when the love is for Allah and His Messenger, can the desire to please be turned into shrieks and wailing, candles and worthless vows?!

As al-Muḥāsibī says: “You seek to draw near to Allah by means of what angers Allah.”

We do not accuse every lover of such folly of opinion and feebleness of thought. They are only shreds of humanity—blinded by ignorance, deafened by impotence, and unwilling to admit either. Thus they spread around themselves and around the ones they love a whole world of secrets from which the beloveds may in fact be entirely free. They claim for themselves—and for those beloveds—the very prerogatives the custodians of those temples of mystery once asserted, and they warn the people against objecting to their deeds for fear that the beloveds will smite them with destruction and ruin.

As a result, we now hear in this occult realm statements the early generations never voiced, revelations never found in the Quran, words never spoken by the Sunnah—proof of how far this path has strayed when