A Highly Beneficial Section
Those who are ignorant of Allah and of His names and attributes—who strip them of their true import—end up, without realizing it, making Allah detested by His creatures and blocking them from the path of loving Him and seeking His favor through obedience.
We shall offer a few illustrative examples:
First: they impress upon the hearts of the simple-minded that no act of obedience benefits a person with Allah, no matter how long it lasts or how thoroughly the servant carries it out both outwardly and inwardly. According to them, the servant can never feel confident or safe from Allah’s scheme; rather, they claim that Allah’s way is to snatch the dutiful, God-fearing worshipper from the miḥrāb (prayer niche) to the mākhūr (brothel), from monotheism and the prayer-beads to idolatry and the flute, turning his heart from pure faith to unbelief.
To support this, they cite reports—some sound but misunderstood, others spurious that the infallible Prophet never uttered—and insist that such notions constitute the very essence of tawḥīd (monotheism). They recite the verses, “He is not questioned about what He does” (Q 21:23); “Do they feel secure from Allah’s plan? No one feels secure from Allah’s plan except the losers” (Q 7:99); and “Know that Allah intervenes between a person and his heart” (Q 8:24).
They even put forward Iblīs as their proof, claiming that he was once the “peacock of the angels,” that there was not a spot in heaven or earth where he had not offered a prostration or a bow—yet the divine decree overtook him and the judgment descended upon him, overturning his once-good nature and turning it into the vilest of things. One of their self-styled gnostics even said: “You should fear Allah the way you fear a lion that may pounce on you though you have committed no crime or offense against it!”
They also cite the Prophet’s words: “One of you may perform the deeds of the people of Paradise until there remains between him and it only a forearm’s length; then what is written overtakes him, and he proceeds to act with the deeds of the people of—”