and a good deed, but rather because their souls desire these things. They therefore considered it part of the path to abandon whatever the soul chooses and desires, and to have no will of their own at all; their sole aim was to submit to the decree, whatever it might be. This is what led many of them into monasticism and departure from the revealed Law, to the point that they gave up food, drink, clothing, and marriage that they needed and without which their religious well-being could not be secured.

For they saw ordinary people treating these things as worship out of natural inclination, desire, and habit. Yet it is well known that actions performed in this manner are neither worship nor obedience nor a means of drawing near to Allah. They therefore considered the path to Allah to lie in abandoning these things, because they belonged to the realm of natural inclinations and habits. Thus, they persisted in hunger, sleeplessness, seclusion, silence, and other practices involving the denial of personal pleasures and the endurance of hardships, to such an extent that they fell into neglecting obligatory and recommended deeds and committing disliked and prohibited acts.