Among the “signs of such people” is that, if they experience some lucidity during their madness, they speak of the faith in their hearts, not disbelief and falsehood. This contrasts with others who, upon regaining some awareness, speak words of disbelief and association of partners with Allah, and babble words of disbelief while deprived of reason. Such a person is a disbeliever, not a Muslim.

As for those who babble unintelligibly in Persian, Turkish, Berber, or other languages—as happens to some who attend gatherings for devotional singing and experience an ecstasy that overwhelms their reason until they babble unintelligibly, or speak in a language other than Arabic—it is Satan who speaks through their tongues, just as he speaks through the tongue of someone possessed.

If someone says that Allah gave these people reason and spiritual states, then preserved their states while taking away their reason, and relieved them of the obligations He had imposed upon them because of what He took away, the response is:

Your statement, “Allah bestowed spiritual states upon them,” is ambiguous. Such states fall into two categories: states from the Most Merciful and satanic states. Whatever extraordinary phenomena these people experience, such as disclosures of hidden matters and astonishing powers of action, may “at times” be of the same kind as those experienced by sorcerers and soothsayers, and “at other times” come from the Most Merciful, like those experienced by people of piety and faith.

If, while in possession of their reason, these people had gifts arising from faith and were pious believers, then there is no doubt that, upon losing their reason, they are relieved of religious obligations because their reason has been taken away. But if what they were given consisted of satanic states—such as those granted to polytheists, the People of the Book, and hypocrites—then losing their reason does not remove them from their previous disbelief and wickedness, just as the former are not removed from their previous faith