desires, to indifference toward committing forbidden acts, and to living off what they receive from common folk, women, and those attached to the rulers. Yet they were not content with these evil deeds: they went on to lay claim to the highest spiritual realities and states. They claimed that they had freed themselves from the bondage of shackles and attained the realities of communion; that they were sustained by the Truth, His decrees unfolding upon them while their own selves were effaced, and that Allah neither reproached nor blamed them for whatever they chose to do or leave undone. They claimed that the secrets of divine oneness had been unveiled to them, that they had been wholly carried beyond themselves, that His rulings governing their human condition no longer applied to them, and that, after their annihilation to themselves, they subsisted through the lights of divine self-sufficiency. When they spoke, it was another who spoke on their behalf; and when they acted, it was another who acted in their stead—indeed, they were made to act.”

Such people are numerous among those who affiliate themselves with Sufism, and it was for something of this kind that al-Hallāj was put to death.