what contradicts this—for example, not inwardly acknowledging that he is the Messenger of Allah, but regarding him as merely a king who commanded obedience and governed people according to his own judgment, like other kings. Or they say that he is Allah’s Messenger to the unlettered, but not to the People of the Book, as many Jews and Christians say; or that he was sent to creation at large, but that Allah has special allies to whom He did not send him and who have no need of him. Rather, they have a path to Allah independent of him, as was the case with al-Khidr and Moses. Or they claim that they receive directly from Allah, without any intermediary, everything they need and benefit from; or that he was sent with the outward religious laws, in which they follow him, but was not sent with the inward realities—or did not know them, or that they know them better than he did, or know them as well as he did without following his path.

Some of these people may say that “Ahl al-Suffa” (the people of the portico) had no need of him and that he was not sent to them. Some of them say that Allah inwardly revealed to Ahl al-Suffa what He revealed to him on the Night of the Ascension, so that Ahl al-Suffa attained the same standing as him. Such is their extreme ignorance that they do not know that the Night Journey took place from Mecca, as Allah Most High says:

“Glory be to Him who took His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, whose surroundings We have blessed.”

Nor do they know that the portico existed only in Medina. It was a portico on the northern side of his mosque, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, where newcomers stayed if they had no family or friends with whom to lodge; for the believers used to emigrate to the Prophet