hear our hearts pounding from our intense aversion to those thoughts and our horror at them. This accords with what the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said when he was asked about this and told:

‘One of us finds within himself thoughts that he would rather be brought forward and beheaded than utter.’

The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, explained that this was pure faith, and that these thoughts were whisperings from Satan. Then we learned the methods of reasoning from evidence and mastered them—all praise and gratitude belong to Allah—but this gave us no greater certainty than we had before. Rather, we realized that our path to the truth had been made easy. We became like someone who knew of an elephant by report and was certain of its existence without having seen it, and then saw it: his certainty that it existed did not increase at all. Sound reasoning from evidence merely led us to reject certain false opinions in which we had been brought up.”

He said:

“Those who disagree with us surely recognize within themselves what we have described. Yet their position necessarily requires them to testify that they themselves were disbelievers before they reasoned from evidence. What we have said thus establishes that everyone who sincerely holds the truth in his heart and professes it