prophethood cannot be attained through personal effort, as the adherents of the religious traditions maintain. Even according to those heretics among the would-be philosophers and others who regard it as something that can be acquired, it is the most difficult of all attainments. Attaining it is therefore far more difficult than acquiring knowledge of crafts and rational sciences.

Since this is so, if a person knows through reason that someone is Allah’s Messenger, knows that he has reported something, and finds within his own reasoning something that conflicts with that report, his reason requires him to refer the points of contention to someone more knowledgeable about them than himself, rather than give precedence to his own opinion over the Messenger’s words. He must recognize that his reason is limited in comparison with the Messenger, and that the Messenger knows more than he does about Allah Most High, His names and attributes, and the Last Day. The disparity between their knowledge of these matters is greater than that between ordinary people and those versed in medicine.

If his reason requires him to follow a Jewish physician’s instructions concerning prescribed quantities of food, drink, medicinal dressings, and purgatives, and their use in a particular manner, despite the hardship and pain involved, because he thinks, “This man knows more about this than I do, and if I believe him, I am more likely to recover”—even though he knows that physicians frequently make mistakes, that many people are not cured by what a physician prescribes, and that following the prescription may even cause their death—and if, despite all this, he accepts the physician’s advice and follows it even when his own judgment and deliberation conflict with the prescription, then what should people’s attitude be toward the messengers, peace and blessings be upon them?!