And Shaykh al-Islām—may Allah sanctify his soul—said:

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Those who have deviated and resemble the Sabians are either mujarrida or inclined toward Judaism or Christianity. They include practitioners of logic and syllogistic reasoning who seek knowledge and speculative discourse, and practitioners of deeds and ecstasy who seek spiritual knowledge and spiritual states—the people of letters and the people of sounds. In pursuing the foundations of knowledge concerning Allah, they have followed two paths, each taking one of them. Some may follow one path at one time and the other at another, while others may combine both.

Most of them recognize no path to Allah other than these two, as various writers maintain, including Ibn al-Khatīb and those who follow his approach. Even Abū Hāmid confined the paths to speculative theology and philosophy, consisting in rational inquiry and syllogistic reasoning, or to Sufism and worship, consisting in deeds and ecstasy. He mentioned no categories beyond these three.

Indeed, in Deliverance from Error and Disclosure of Spiritual States, Abū Hāmid described his experiences with the paths to knowledge and the circumstances of the scholar. He stated that the first difficulty he encountered was one that obstructs their path: sophistical skepticism, with its familiar doubts. He related that this malady afflicted him severely for nearly two months, during which he adhered to sophistical skepticism in his actual state, rather than in his reasoning or expressed views, until he was healed