from their very selves and their own love; immersed in the One they remember, they become oblivious of their remembrance; through the One they know, they forget their own knowledge; through His sheer being, they lose awareness of their own existence, until they behold nothing but their Beloved. When their faculty of discrimination departs, their reason is diminished, and intoxication overtakes them, they may imagine that they themselves are the Beloved—just as it is said: a beloved fell into the sea, whereupon the lover flung himself in after him. The beloved protested, “I am the one who has fallen; what made you fall?” The lover replied, “I was lost in you and thought you were me.”

There is no doubt that this is error and deviation. Yet if the loss of reason results solely from the onrush of love and remembrance, with no unlawful cause, the person is excused for his lapse and is not taken to task for whatever he utters in that state in which his reason has departed without a prohibited cause. It has been said of the “sane madmen” that they are people to whom Allah granted intellect and spiritual states; then He removed their intellects and left their states, and by removing the basis of obligation He lifted the obligations themselves.

If, however, the cause of the loss of reason is itself forbidden, the intoxicated person is not excused—although, according to the sounder of the two opinions, he is not judged an unbeliever, just as, according to the sounder view in the well-known dispute, a divorce he pronounces is not valid. We have discussed this in detail elsewhere, clarifying whose state may be accepted and whose may not, and the underlying principles involved.

In any event, the type of fanāʾ (annihilation) that brings one to such a condition is a deficient state, even if its possessor is no longer legally accountable. For this reason nothing of the sort has been reported from the Companions—the best of this community—nor from our Prophet Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, even though some of these people try to link their experience to Moses’s swoon. Loss of reason during divine influxes occurred only among certain Followers (tābiʿīn) and those who came after them.

Perfect love necessarily entails conforming to the Beloved in what He loves and what He hates, in loyalty to His friends and enmity toward His foes. It is therefore self-evident that whoever loves Allah with the obligatory love must hate His enemies and must love what He loves of striving against them, as He says: “Indeed, Allah loves those who fight in His cause in ranks as though they were a solid structure.” ⦗al-Ṣaff 61:4⦘

The consummate lover is not affected by the blame of the blamer or the reproach of the reproacher; rather, such censure only spurs him on to persevere in love, a theme poets have treated at length. These are the praiseworthy malāmiyya—those who do not fear anyone who blames them for the jihad against Allah’s enemies that He loves and approves of, for blame in this matter is abundant.

By contrast, being blamed for doing what Allah detests or for neglecting what He loves is blame that is deserved, and patient endurance of such blame is not praiseworthy; returning to the truth is better than persisting in falsehood. Thus one distinguishes between the malāmiyya who do what Allah and His Messenger love and fear no blame for it, and the malāmiyya who do what Allah and His Messenger hate and then bear the blame for it.