—exalted is He:

“But as for the one who feared standing before his Lord and restrained himself from desire, Paradise will indeed be his refuge.”

The Most High also said:

“Do not follow desire, lest it lead you astray from Allah’s path. Indeed, those who stray from Allah’s path will suffer a severe punishment because they forgot the Day of Reckoning.”

As for someone who gazes at beardless youths, imagining that he is gazing at divine beauty, and makes this a path to Allah—as various groups claiming knowledge of Allah do—his assertion constitutes greater disbelief than the assertions of idolaters and the disbelief of Lot’s people. Such people are among the worst apostate heretics, who must be put to death according to the unanimous consensus of the entire Muslim community. For the idolaters said:

“We worship them only so that they may bring us nearer to Allah.”

These people, however, hold that Allah exists within the idols themselves and dwells in them. By His appearance and manifestation in created things, they do not mean that these things point to Him and serve as signs for them. Rather, they mean that He Himself—glory be to Him—has appeared and manifested Himself in them. They liken this to the appearance of water in a glass bottle, butter in milk, oil in olives, oil in sesame seeds, and similar things that imply the indwelling of His very Essence in His creation or His union with it. They extend this to all created things, just as the Christians say it of Christ alone.

They regard beardless youths as manifestations of beauty, and establish this supreme form of associating partners with Allah as a means of declaring sexual immoralities lawful—indeed, of declaring everything forbidden lawful. Thus, the most distinguished of their later figures, al-Tilimsānī, was asked: “If your assertion that existence is one is true, what is the difference between my mother and my sister