Such a person is not one of the God-fearing awliyāʾ of Allah who have karāmāt (saintly wonders); rather, he may be an unbeliever or a flagrant sinner. I am acquainted with many such cases, but this is not the place to set them out in detail.

Among the idolaters and the Christians there are likewise numerous occurrences of this sort, which they imagine to be of the same order as the signs granted to the prophets. In reality, however, they belong to the realm of what magicians and diviners perform. Whoever fails to distinguish between the awliyāʾ of the Most Merciful and the allies of Satan, and between prophetic miracles, the karāmāt of the righteous, and the extraordinary feats of sorcerers, soothsayers, and those accompanied by devils, will inevitably have truth and falsehood confused. Such a person will either deny the truth brought by the truthful prophets, or believe the falsehood proclaimed by liars and the deluded.

These matters are discussed at length elsewhere; the present aim is only to draw attention to this foundational principle. Christian scholars themselves acknowledge it, and they possess many reports about the allies of Satan whose works were undone by the allies of the Most Merciful, just as Moses—may Allah’s blessings be upon him—nullified that with which the sorcerers confronted him.