Section: The Extraordinary Feats by Which the Devils Lead the Children of Adam Astray

The paranormal feats by which the devils mislead mankind include cases such as a devil taking on the likeness of someone who is absent or deceased, and similar occurrences. Many people have been deceived by them—those who affiliate themselves with the Muslims, with the People of the Scripture, and others besides—and their error rests on two assumptions.

First: that whoever performs such feats must be a walī of Allah; in Christian language, a great saint.

Second: that whoever is thus regarded is infallible, so whatever he reports is necessarily true and whatever he commands is invariably just.

Yet it may well be that no authentic marvel—neither divinely granted nor devilish—has appeared at his hands at all. Rather, he may have devised one of the countless tricks practiced by liars and libertines. Such ruses are legion, and people imagine them to be extraordinary wonders that break the natural order, whereas in reality they are nothing of the sort, like the stratagems attributed to certain monks.