Thus one finds soothsayers who repeatedly detect the falsehood of the entity that speaks to them. The same is true of certain devout ascetics who receive inner communications and unveilings—some demonic, others angelic; the lies the devil brings them soon become evident, exactly as experience shows. There is no worshipful shaykh who is subject to a satanic state without the devil eventually telling him something whose falsity becomes plain to him. If, after that, he believes that liar when the latter tells him that he, the worshipper, is a prophet, he is simply endorsing a liar.

Furthermore, the truthful messenger who visits him with genuine information and sincere counsel must necessarily expose the deception; hence the man will not persist in thinking that his visitor is truthful when, in reality, he is a liar. No one fails to realize that the visitor is lying except a sinful fabricator.

Allah the Exalted says:
{Shall I inform you upon whom the devils descend?} ⦗26:221⦘
221
{They descend upon every sinful fabricator.} ⦗26:222⦘

Their constant descent, then, is upon the sinful fabricator; as for a devil’s descending once or twice, that may happen to someone who is not such a person. Whoever does not claim prophethood is outside this discussion. But if he does claim it, the truthful angel who visits him could never endorse that claim; rather, were it to occur at all, the angel would have to expose the lie.

For this reason people have differed: Is it possible for Satan to cast words upon a prophet’s tongue…?