al-Harbī and others, that drinking nabīdh whose permissibility is disputed is better than abstaining from it.

Such interpretation extends to all five legal categories: it makes what is obligatory recommended, permissible, disliked or forbidden, and makes what is forbidden disliked, permissible, recommended or obligatory. The same applies to the remaining categories.

Another instructive consideration is that ascetics and people devoted to worship and spiritual aspiration allowed themselves greater latitude in hearing and sight, while scholars and people devoted to speculative theology and rational inquiry allowed themselves greater latitude in discourse and inward reflection. Thus, the latter developed innovated theological discourse, and the former innovated listening practices: one group concerned itself with letters, the other with sound. You find those who practise listening frequently denouncing the speculative theologians. Thus, Shaykh Abū ʿAbd al-Rahmān al-Sulamī composed a work condemning speculative theology and its adherents, both of them being leading authorities among those who practise listening. Conversely, we find scholars and speculative theologians vehemently condemning those who practise listening, as in the writings of Abū Bakr ibn Fūrak. The speculative theologians’ denunciations of listening, its practitioners and the Sufis are too numerous to count.

This is because the latter exhibit a deviation resembling that of the Jews, the people of learning