who remain on the straight path—the path of those whom Allah has favoured, not of those who have incurred His wrath, nor of those who have gone astray. For the dialectical theologians who have deviated bear a resemblance to the Jews, while the Sufis who have deviated bear a resemblance to the Christians. Thus, the former chiefly emphasize letters and the knowledge and belief they signify, while the latter chiefly emphasize sounds and the ecstasy and movement they arouse. Complementing this, Allah commanded His Prophet to invite people to the way of his Lord with wisdom and good admonition, and to debate with them in the best manner.
These three methods are beneficial in knowledge and action, and resemble what logicians call demonstration, rhetoric, and dialectic. There remain poetry and sophistry—which is disguised falsehood—and Allah repudiated these in His words:
“Shall I inform you upon whom the devils descend?”
“They descend upon every sinful liar.”
“They lend an ear, and most of them are liars.”
“And the poets are followed by those who go astray.”
And so on to the end of the surah. He thus mentioned the liars, who are the sophists, and mentioned the poets.
Likewise, when ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb said to Abū Bakr al-Siddīq, “O successor to the Messenger of Allah, win the people over,” Abū Bakr took hold of his beard and said: “O Ibn al-Khattāb! A tyrant in the pre-Islamic days of ignorance, but a weakling in Islam? On what basis am I to win them over? With a fabricated account or contrived poetry?”
He thus mentioned fabricated accounts and contrived poetry, just as Allah mentioned liars and poets. Falsehood pertains to the cognitive faculty, while poetry pertains to the practical, volitional faculty: the former is misguidance, and the latter is waywardness.