benefit them. And they certainly knew that whoever purchased it would have no share in the Hereafter. How wretched was that for which they sold themselves, if only they knew.”

Many of these people fly through the air, carried by devils who take them to Mecca and elsewhere. Yet such a person may be a heretic who denies the obligation of prayer and other duties prescribed by Allah and His Messenger, and regards as lawful what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden. Those devils associate with him only because of his disbelief, wickedness, and disobedience. Once he believes in Allah and His Messenger, repents, and commits himself to obeying Allah and His Messenger, those devils leave him, and those satanic phenomena—the disclosures of information and the effects they produce—disappear.

I know many such people in Syria, Egypt, the Hijaz, and Yemen. In Upper Mesopotamia, Iraq, Khurāsān, and the lands of Rūm, there are more people of this kind than in Syria and elsewhere. These phenomena are still more pronounced in the lands of the disbelievers, whether polytheists or People of the Book.

These satanic phenomena, whose causes are disbelief, wickedness, and disobedience, manifest themselves in proportion to the prevalence of their causes. Wherever faith, belief in Allah’s oneness, and the light of discernment and faith are strong, and the effects of prophethood and the divine message are evident, these satanic phenomena weaken. Wherever disbelief, wickedness, and disobedience prevail, these satanic phenomena grow stronger. A person in whom both are present—who has within him a source nourishing faith and another nourishing hypocrisy—will experience something of both states.

The polytheists who have not entered Islam, such as the Bakhshiyya, the Tūniyya, and the Buddī