the prescribed punishment is required in the one case but not the other. This is Ahmad’s explicitly stated position and the view of Abū Hanīfa.

Among these people are those whose spiritual experience becomes so overpowering that they become insane, whether because a bodily humour gains ascendancy over them or for some other reason. They include the “wise among the insane,” who are counted among the ascetics and are sometimes called “the bewildered.”

One scholar said of them:
“Allah granted these people intellects and spiritual states; then He took away their intellects and, through what He took away, relieved them of the obligations He had imposed.”

These states may be accompanied by fainting, death, insanity, intoxication, or self-effacement to the point of losing awareness of oneself, and similar experiences. If their causes are prescribed by the religion, and the person experiencing them is sincere and unable to ward them off, then he is praiseworthy for the good he has done and the faith he has attained, and excused for what he could not prevent and what befell him involuntarily. Such people are more complete than those who have not reached their station because of deficient faith, hardness of heart, or similar causes involving neglect of what Allah loves or commission of what He dislikes.

However, someone who retains his reason while attaining what they have attained of faith, or its like, or something more complete, is superior to them. This was the state of the Companions, may Allah be pleased with them, and it was the state of our Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. He was taken by night to heaven, and Allah showed him what He showed him; yet in the morning he was like someone who had passed an ordinary night, his state unchanged. His state was therefore superior to