on the basis of their corrupt premises, they asserted that prophethood possesses three distinctive properties and that whoever combines them is a prophet:

1. He must have a cognitive power, which they call the “sacred faculty,” through which he acquires knowledge without study.

2. He must enjoy an imaginative power that projects to him what he already understands inwardly, so that he beholds images or hears sounds within himself—just as a sleeper sees and hears in a dream—while nothing of it exists externally. They claimed that those images are the angels of God and those sounds are the speech of God, exalted is He.

3. He must possess an active power by which he can effect changes in the prime matter of the world. Accordingly, they reduced prophetic miracles, saintly marvels, and the wonders wrought by sorcerers to mere psychic forces. Of these marvels they acknowledged only what tallied with their own principles—such as a staff turning into a living serpent—while denying others like the splitting of the moon.

[A Critique of Ibn Sīnā’s Views]

We have addressed these people at length elsewhere, demonstrating that their discourse is deeply flawed and that what they take to be the exclusive prerogatives of a prophet can in fact be surpassed by ordinary individuals and by the prophets’ followers. Moreover, the angels about whom the messengers have spoken are living, articulate beings—among the greatest of God’s creatures and vast in number—as He, the Exalted, has said: