and acts of worship draw them out of their familiar ways and habits, bringing them to resemble immaterial intellects. They thus become knowledgeable and receptive to the forms of knowledge and understanding being impressed upon them. Two groups hold this view.

The first consists of those philosophers who draw closer to prophethood and revealed laws, while maintaining that the world is eternal, that the celestial spheres cannot split apart, and that there is no agent who acts by choice.

The second consists of Muslim Sufis who have adopted philosophy and drawn closer to the philosophers. They claim that acts of worship are exercises that prepare souls, free them from material attachments, detach them from the sensory world, and allow spiritual influxes and insights to descend upon them.

Some of them consider worship obligatory solely for this purpose. Once it has been achieved, a person is free either to maintain his regular devotions or to occupy himself instead with the spiritual influx he receives. Others insist that regular devotions and prescribed practices must be maintained without neglect. These, too, fall into two groups.

The first considers this obligatory to preserve the established code and safeguard the religious order.

The others consider it obligatory to preserve the spiritual influx, fearing that abandoning these practices would allow the soul gradually to revert to its original animal state.

This is as far as those who discourse on the spiritual path have advanced, and the limit of their understanding of the wisdom of worship and the purpose for which it was prescribed. In their books, you will scarcely find anything beyond these three approaches, whether combined or adopted as alternatives.

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As for the fourth category, they are the community of Muhammad and Abraham: followers of the two intimate friends of Allah, who know Allah and His wisdom in His commands, His revealed law, and His creation, and who possess insight into worshipping Him and what He intends by it.