As for the other benefit, extraordinary feats likewise cannot secure it unless accompanied by religion. Religion alone, however, secures the Hereafter without any extraordinary feat. Indeed, extraordinary feats pertaining to religion and created affairs are more far-reaching than attaining the Hereafter, as in the case of our Prophet Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Likewise, the wealth and leadership that religious people attain through extraordinary feats are attained only in conjunction with religion. Otherwise, extraordinary feats alone have only a limited effect in this world.

If it is said:

“Even if extraordinary feats alone bring no religious or worldly benefit in themselves, they indicate that people will obey the person who performs them. This brings leadership and authority, which then serve as a means of securing religious and worldly benefits and averting religious and worldly harms.”

I reply:

We have been discussing only the benefit inherent in religion or an extraordinary feat, independently of people’s actions.

If, however, we discuss what people do as a result of these things, then we say, first:

True religion is more effective in securing people’s obedience and attaining leadership than extraordinary feats alone, as experience demonstrates. There is no comparison between the obedience shown to someone because of his religion and that shown to someone because of his influence. Obedience to the former is more widespread and greater, and those who obey him are the best of humanity in intellect and religion. Obedience to the latter, however, neither endures nor becomes widespread. Only ignorant people engage in it, such as the followers of Musaylima the Liar, Tulayha al-Asadī, and others like them, and desert and mountain dwellers and their like who possess neither reason nor religion.