is concealing our secrets, and pilgrimage and visitation are to our holy shaykhs.”

These people are heretics and hypocrites by the consensus of the early imams of Islam. Their hypocrisy is evident to anyone with even the slightest knowledge of Islam. Moreover, their leading figures do not say that these obligations are lifted from the elect, as they do in matters of doctrine. For whoever denies that the scriptural statements concerning practice intend these actions is even more emphatic in rejecting the scriptural statements concerning doctrine.

This type is found among the Qarmatians who openly profess Rāfidism, among the heretical Sufis who advocate union with God and divine indwelling, and among extremist speculative theologians. These people, however, may claim that the general scriptural address enjoining prayer, zakat, fasting, and pilgrimage admits exceptions—even though this is a false claim whose invalidity is a matter of basic, undeniable knowledge in Islam. They do not claim that the ruling conveyed by that address is set aside altogether.

As for the more rational members of this esotericist group, such as this Ibn Rushd and others like him, they only