Anyone acquainted with the realities of Mecca knows full well that this claim is blatant falsehood: nothing of the kind lies beneath the Kaʿbah. No Meccan ever descends to anything under it, no one excavates there, no one burns incense there, and there is neither an idol nor anything else of the sort. Ibn Sabʿīn and others like him were bewildered by the matter and would sometimes say, “If only we knew what talisman Abraham, the Friend, fashioned that produced such an outcome!” Yet they know that talismans can never achieve anything remotely comparable, that nothing on earth even approaches it, and that talismans are ordinary contrivances whose causes are well known. One man may fashion a talisman and another may make one like it—or greater—yet this phenomenon lies altogether beyond human ability. There exists no talisman capable of taking possession of all the earth’s inhabitants or of steering the hearts of the peoples of the three temperate zones, who are the best of humankind and the most complete in intellect and religion.

A talisman’s influence grows only when the intellect is weak: it affects inanimate objects more than living beings, beasts more than human beings, and children and the mentally disturbed more than rational adults. The same is true of the influence of devils—the weaker the minds, the stronger their sway. By contrast, the power of the House, the Qur’an, and prophethood is strongest over those whose minds are soundest and whose knowledge and understanding are most complete. Indeed, Islam has spread to the easternmost and westernmost parts of the earth, just as the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—said:

“The earth was folded up for me, so I saw its eastern and western reaches, and the dominion of my community will extend to every span that was folded up for me.”

It has likewise spread into the third of the intermediate climes