He has forged a lie against God and His Messenger. God has never been pleased with any religion other than Islam—the faith with which He sent Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace. Neither God nor His Messenger has ever accepted from any of creation a religion other than this one, even though at the beginning He did not command them to fight because the Muslims were weak and few in number.

For that reason, when the Helpers (al-Anṣār) sought the Prophet’s permission on the Night of al-‘Aqabah, after pledging their allegiance to him, to engage in combat, he replied, “I have not yet been commanded to do so.” Later, when fighting was prescribed, some of them disliked it, and the Exalted said:

“Have you not seen those to whom it was said, ‘Restrain your hands, establish the prayer, and give the zakat’? Yet when fighting was ordained for them, a party of them feared people as they fear God, or even more. They said, ‘Our Lord, why have You prescribed fighting for us? If only You would delay us for a little while.’ Say, ‘The enjoyment of this world is small, whereas the Hereafter is better for the one who is mindful of God, and you will not be wronged even to the measure of a thread inside a date stone.’”
(Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, 4:77)

A full exposition of this verse belongs elsewhere.

What concerns us here is what relates to the philosophers. The word “philosophy” is Greek and means “love of wisdom,” and “philosopher” in their tongue means “lover of wisdom.” They also say sophistia, meaning “counterfeit wisdom”; this then circulated on people’s tongues as safsaṭah, or “sophistry,” i.e. spurious wisdom.

As for the claim made by some who relay the doctrines of others—that among the Greeks there was a man named Sophista, and that he and his followers denied all realities, dividing themselves into four sects: (1) those who categorically negate realities; (2) those who assert that realities exist but that no knowledge of them is possible, saying no one knows anything; (3) those who suspend judgment, saying “We do not know,” called the “ignorers” or the “agnostics”; and (4) those who maintain that realities follow beliefs, so whatever a person believes is the reality itself—this report, taken at face value, is false. There is no known group in the world that upholds any of these positions with respect to everything, nor is there any man by the name of Sophista.