Section:
A General Principle:

Most people frequently depart from the middle course in most matters. An example is their opposing attitudes towards certain practices: some adopt them as religious observances that are obligatory, recommended, or generally enjoined, while others consider them unlawful and disliked, or forbidden, or generally prohibited.

An example is “listening to singing.” A group among the Sufis and those who profess poverty adopt it as a religious practice, even if they neither declare with their tongues nor believe in their hearts that it is a means of drawing near to Allah. Their religion consists in an inner state, not a doctrinal conviction: their inner state and conduct consist in approving of it in their hearts and loving it as a religious observance and a means of drawing near to Allah. Some of them, however, may indeed believe this and state it verbally.

Others among them believe and say, “It is not a means of drawing near to Allah,” yet their inner state treats it as precisely that, as beneficial to religion and conducive to reforming the heart. Some go to such extremes in this regard that they regard everyone who abstains from it as excluded from friendship with Allah and from its fruits—the lofty spiritual stations.