or teach them. Attributing such things to any prophet is like attributing them to Solomon, peace be upon him, when Allah subjected the jinn, human beings, and birds to him. Some people claimed that this was accomplished through various forms of sorcery, to the point that certain groups of Jews and Christians do not regard him as a wise prophet. Allah therefore cleared him of this, saying, Exalted is He:
“They followed what the devils recited during Solomon’s reign. Solomon did not disbelieve, but the devils disbelieved, teaching people sorcery”—to the end of the verse.
Likewise, drawing inferences about events from the celestial movements upon which they rely, and selecting times for undertakings: it is known with certainty that no prophet was ever commanded to do any of this. It contains falsehood and absurdity beneath even rational people who are far below the prophets. Whatever truth it contains is like what their leading authority and Second Teacher, Abū Nasr al-Fārābī, described. He said, in substance:
“If you reversed the astrologers’ classifications, making the auspicious inauspicious and the inauspicious auspicious, the hot cold and the cold hot, the masculine feminine and the feminine masculine, and then made your predictions accordingly, your predictions would be of the same kind as theirs: sometimes right and sometimes wrong.”
They consider Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, and his followers among the Peripatetic philosophers above anything of this kind, even though their writings contain falsehood and error comparable to what is found in the writings of the Jews and Christians. If they consider these Sabians and their prophets—who are of lower standing and further removed from knowledge of the truth than the Jews and Christians—above such things, how can it be permissible to attribute them to a noble prophet?