They add: when the magicians perceived that Pharaoh was truthful in what he said, they acknowledged it and declared,

“Pass whatever judgment you will pass; you can only decide about this present life” (Qur’an 20:72).

Accordingly, they conclude, Pharaoh’s pronouncement, “I am your Supreme Lord” (Qur’an 79:24), proved correct, and Pharaoh himself was the very embodiment of the Real. They then went on to deny the reality of the Last Day, claiming that the inhabitants of Hell will enjoy themselves just as the inhabitants of Paradise do. Thus they became disbelievers in God and the Last Day, as well as in His angels, His Books, and His messengers—while at the same time asserting that they are the refined elite of God’s saints, that they surpass the prophets, and that the prophets only come to know God by the light that shines from their niche.

This is not the place to lay bare all the strands of their unbelief, yet because our discussion concerns the friends of God and the difference between the allies of the All-Merciful and the allies of Satan—and because these people make the greatest claim to God’s friendship while in truth enjoying the greatest friendship with Satan—we have sounded the warning. Indeed, the bulk of their discourse revolves around satanic states; they repeat what the author of al-Futūḥāt says in his chapter “The Land of Reality,” insisting that it is only a land of imagination.

You may therefore realize that the “reality” of which they speak is nothing but fantasy, a realm in which Satan takes charge, for Satan clothes things in deceptive images that are the very opposite of how they really are.