“They are a people who have cast off order and breached … the bounds: for them there is neither obligatory nor voluntary worship.
Madmen—yet the secret of their madness … is so exalted that reason prostrates at its gates.”

These are the words of a misguided man—indeed, a disbeliever—who imagines that a madman possesses a secret at whose threshold reason prostrates. This is because he has witnessed in some madmen a kind of disclosure of hidden matters or an astonishing feat beyond the ordinary. Such things occur because of the devils associated with the madman, just as they occur with sorcerers and soothsayers. This misguided man therefore imagines that anyone who discloses hidden matters or performs extraordinary feats is a friend of Allah.

Whoever believes this is a disbeliever by the consensus of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. For many disbelievers and polytheists, let alone the People of the Book, experience disclosures of hidden matters and extraordinary feats through their devils many times greater than those experienced by these people. The further a man strays and the greater his disbelief, the closer Satan is to him. Yet all these people’s disclosures necessarily contain lies and fabrications.

Their deeds must likewise involve wickedness and transgression, just as do those of their brethren among sorcerers and soothsayers. Allah Most High says:

“Shall I inform you upon whom the devils descend?”

“They descend upon every sinful liar.”

Thus, anyone upon whom the devils descend must be marked by lying