As for Allah Most High creating His creatures, providing for them, answering their supplications, guiding their hearts, granting them victory over their enemies, and otherwise bringing them benefit and warding off harm, all this belongs to Allah alone. He does it through whatever means He wills; the messengers have no intermediary role in such matters.

Moreover, however far a man may advance in “asceticism, worship, and knowledge,” if he does not believe in everything Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, brought, he is neither a believer nor a friend of Allah Most High. Such is the case with the rabbis and monks among the scholars and worshippers of the Jews and Christians. The same applies to those associated with learning and worship among the polytheists—the Arabs, Turks, Indians, and others. Any sage among the Indians or Turks who possesses knowledge, or practises asceticism and worship within his religion, but does not believe in everything Muhammad brought, is a disbeliever and an enemy of Allah, even if some people consider him a friend of Allah—just as the Persian sages were disbelieving Magians.

Likewise, the sages of “Greece,” such as Aristotle and others like him, were polytheists who worshipped idols and heavenly bodies. Aristotle lived three hundred years before the Messiah, peace be upon him, and was a minister to Alexander of Macedon, son of Philip. This is the Alexander from whom Roman and Greek chronologies reckon their dates, as do the Jews and Christians. He is not Dhū al-Qarnayn, whom Allah mentioned in His Book, although some people suppose that Aristotle was a minister to Dhū al-Qarnayn. Seeing that one was named Alexander and that the other is also sometimes called Alexander, they assumed that the two were the same, as Ibn Sīnā and a group who share his view suppose.