We affirm whatever has been reported of their extraordinary gifts and has been soundly transmitted by trustworthy narrators:

The rank of prophethood is a station
A step above messengership and beneath the saint.

This is outright disbelief, for the most excellent are the messengers, then the prophets, then the saints. The Sufis, in their estimation, place the saint above the prophet because—so they claim—the saint receives directly from Allah, whereas the prophet receives by means of an intermediary.

As for the author’s words, “We state that one prophet is better than all the saints,” there can be no doubt about this. All the saints from the first of creation to the last would not equal a single prophet. Such is the creed of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah.

This is a weighty subject—the matter of supernatural signs (karamat). A breach of the natural order that occurs at the hands of a prophet is called a miracle. The Qur’an is the greatest of these miracles: neither humankind nor jinn have been able to produce anything like it. Other examples are Moses’s staff and the nine signs he was given, and Jesus son of Mary bringing the dead back to life. When a supernatural event occurs at the hands of a righteous person, it is a karamah that Allah brings about through him; it is not from the person himself. Such was the case with the Companions of the Cave, and with Mary—“Whenever Zachariah entered upon her in the sanctuary he found provision with her” (Āl ʿImrān 3:37). Her sustenance reached her while she remained devoted in worship, never leaving the sanctuary. Similar karamat have occurred within this community as well, and Shaykh al-Islām has cited some of them in his book Al-Furqān.

However, if a supernatural feat appears at the hands of a soothsayer or a sorcerer, then it is a