If these people are among the most ignorant and unbelieving of mankind, then anyone who considers the leaders of the esotericist heretics superior to Muhammad, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus is even more ignorant and unbelieving than they.

These heretics fashioned a doctrine from the religion of the Magians, the religion of the Sabians, and the religion of this community’s Rāfidīs. They went from one school’s door to another, only to attain the basest ends. For they harbour a degree of opposition to the messengers and repudiation of what they brought that even the followers of Paul and other such Christians did not harbour.

Those heretics among speculative theologians, devotees, and others who have not gone this far nevertheless share their fundamental premise: preferring their leaders and shaykhs to the prophets. Those among them who do not acknowledge this preference are nonetheless inescapably committed to it, as explained above, if they hold that knowledge of Allah, His angels, His Books, His messengers, and the Hereafter cannot be gained from the prophets’ discourse, words, explanations, and the path they set forth, but can only be gained from the words of their own shaykhs and leaders.

[The Thirty-Ninth Argument]

It may be said:

The messengers did not remain silent on this subject. Had they remained silent, it would necessarily follow that the negationists’ shaykhs and leaders were superior to the prophets, as explained above. What, then, if they spoke on it in terms that people understand to mean the opposite of the truth, according to the negationists,