and the native Arabs, and ordinary polytheist Tatars, whose scholars were polytheist sorcerers from among the Bakhshiyya, the Tawīniyya, and their like, and whose finest scholars were leaders of the heretics. Compare the ordinary followers of these groups with ordinary Jews and Christians: you will find ordinary Jews and Christians less corrupt in worldly and religious affairs than those people, and those people more corrupt in reason and religion.

As for those of intermediate rank among you, such as astrologers, practitioners of incantations, and their like, there is in them so much ignorance, misguidance, falsehood, and absurdity that none but the Lord of Majesty can reckon it all. And did