person who receives unveilings and flies through the air or walks on water is a friend of Allah, whether he prays or not; or believes that prayer is accepted without ritual purification; or regards as friends of Allah the ecstatics, the enraptured, and the insane who frequent cemeteries, rubbish dumps, tahārāt, inns, qamāmīn, and other such places, neither performing ablution nor offering the obligatory prayers—whoever believes that these people are friends of Allah is a disbeliever and an apostate from Islam, by agreement of the leading scholars of Islam, even if he himself is an ascetic devoted to worship.

Monks are even more ascetic and devoted to worship. They believe in much of what the Messenger brought, and most of them revere the Messenger and his followers. Yet they have not believed in everything he brought; rather, they have believed in some and disbelieved in some, thereby becoming disbelievers. As Allah Most High says:

“Indeed, those who disbelieve in Allah and His messengers and wish to distinguish between Allah and His messengers, saying, ‘We believe in some and disbelieve in others,’ and wish to adopt a way in between—

“Those are the disbelievers, truly. And We have prepared for the disbelievers a humiliating punishment.

“But those who believe in Allah and His messengers and make no distinction between any of them—to those He will give their rewards. And Allah is ever Forgiving and Merciful.”

As for someone deprived of reason or insane, the most that can be said is that he is exempt from accountability and therefore incurs no punishment. His faith, prayer, fasting, and all his other deeds are invalid, for no deeds are accepted without reason. Thus, anyone who lacks reason