in them. Even if they also experience a taste of faith and an ecstasy of spiritual insight that are praiseworthy and enjoined, it is these that deserve praise, not the loss of reason and discernment.

For this reason, none of the Companions experienced intoxication, whether when listening to the Quran or on any other occasion. Nor did the early generations speak of intoxication. Rather, it was discussed by a group of later Sufis who began to experience a kind of intoxication through the spiritual taste and ecstasy in their hearts, accompanied by the loss of discernment and reason. They distinguish between sobriety and intoxication.

Their intoxication is akin to the fainting and swooning during listening that appeared among some of the Successors in Basra and elsewhere. Intoxication, fainting, and swooning all involve the loss of reason and discernment, though their causes and the experiences accompanying them differ. One such experience of spiritual taste or ecstasy may arise from love and pleasure, another from fear and pain, and another from an inability to comprehend the overwhelming majesty revealed to a person, as happened to Moses, peace be upon him.

It must therefore be understood that these states, like fanā (effacement), are not perfections without qualification. What deserves praise in them, however, is whatever praiseworthy element of faith they contain, whether a spiritual taste or ecstasy