who had informed them and whose report they had accepted. When his beauty overwhelmed them, they said:

“This is no human being; this is none other than a noble angel.”

For such beauty is not a human attribute.

The second answer is that they believed angels to be better than the prophets, and this belief of theirs was mistaken. It cannot be argued that, because it was not accompanied by a rebuke, it must be true. Their statement,

“This is no human being,”

was mistaken. Their statement,

“This is none other than a noble angel,”

was also mistaken, in their denying (*) that he was human and asserting that he was an angel. Even if it was not accompanied by a rebuke, this indicates that it is true and that their statement,

“This is no human being; this is none other than a noble angel,”

was mistaken in denying his humanity and asserting that he was an angel. Even if it was not accompanied by a rebuke, this was because they had lost their senses upon seeing him, and so they were not blamed for it in that state.

I also say that the women did not mean that he was a prophet, nor even that he was among the righteous at that time. They did not attest to his superiority over other human beings in righteousness and religion; they attested only to his superiority in beauty and loveliness. His beauty captivated them, so they likened him to the angels. This has nothing to do with superiority in the sense we intend.

We then say: If superiority in beauty is indeed established, it has been established that the first group of the inhabitants of Paradise will enter with faces like the sun, and those who follow them with faces like the moon—as the hadith states. Such is the ultimate condition of the blessed. If there is any superiority in beauty and angelic nature, it is only in this worldly life, according to the knowledge possessed by the women and most people.