innovators who have departed from the Sunnah. Well-known statements to this effect have been transmitted from a number of leading scholars, and groups of jurists and speculative theologians followed them in this. Another group went to excess concerning them, claiming that they are the best and most accomplished of creation after the prophets. Both extremes are blameworthy.

The “correct view” is that they strive to obey Allah according to their considered judgment, just as others devoted to obeying Allah have done. Among them are those who are foremost in good deeds and brought near to Allah, according to their efforts, and those who follow a moderate course and belong to the companions of the right. In both categories are people who may exercise their judgment and err. Among them, too, are those who sin and then repent—or do not repent. Some who affiliate themselves with them wrong themselves and disobey their Lord.

Groups of people given to religious innovation and heresy have also affiliated themselves with them, but the discerning authorities among the Sufis do not regard such people as belonging to them. Al-Hallāj, for example, was rejected by most masters of the path, who excluded him from it. These included al-Junayd ibn Muhammad, the leader of the Sufi community, and others, as Shaykh Abū 'Abd al-Rahmān al-Sulamī related in Tabaqāt al-Sūfiyya (Generations of the Sufis), and as the hadith master Abū Bakr al-Khatīb related in Tārīkh Baghdād (History of Baghdad).

This, then, is Sufism in its original form. Later, it branched out and took various forms, and there came to be