We have chosen to dwell at length on this question—though it truly deserves a fuller treatment—for two reasons:

• First: the latter-day zindīqs who deny the very existence of the Creator, reject everything the messengers and the heavenly books have reported about the unseen, and acknowledge as knowledge only what their senses and their limited experiments—confined to a few branches of physical science—can reach. They deny everything else and claim that this universe, with the order that governs it, can never be altered, that it came into being by pure chance without a maker, and that it is a machine moving by itself and by its own nature, without any manager, Lord, or creator! Every adherent of the revealed religions recognizes their obstinacy and defiance; having been stripped of religion altogether, they have also forfeited sound reason, for they have denied the clearest of truths, the most evident of realities, and the strongest of proofs and signs, and have wandered astray with their meager intellects and corrupt opinions. Their case is well known.

• Second: certain contemporary intellectuals who present themselves as champions of Islam and engage those heretics in debate. Out of misguided ijtihād or sheer credulity, they try to make the divine norms and the matters of the Hereafter conform to what human beings can apprehend through their senses and test by experiment. In order to do so they have distorted the miracles, denied the manifest signs, and harvested nothing but harm for themselves and for anyone who reads their works on these subjects. Their faith in Allah has been weakened by their reinterpretations of the prophets’ miracles—reinterpretations that amount to outright denial—and by their rejection of this great category of Allah’s decree and destiny. Likewise, the faith of those who encounter their words without insight and without sufficient religious learning to refute such notions has been shaken.