while those who witnessed it saw and heard what they did. Even among those present, some heard and saw things that others did not. For this momentous event was far-reaching: it strengthened the religion, made its supreme message prevail, compelled people to follow the Book and the Sunnah, and exposed the falsity of those who departed from them through misleading innovations, corrupt spiritual states, and deception of the Muslims.
Elsewhere I have described the condition of these “Batā’ihiyyah” and their path, as well as the path and condition of Shaykh Ahmad ibn al-Rifā‘ī, explaining where they agreed with the Muslims and where they differed from them. This was to clarify which aspects of their practice belonged to the religion of Islam and which departed from it. Describing all that here would take too long. Here I have written only what I can recall of the account of this well-known encounter in which I debated and confronted them.
I already knew about their condition from what I have mentioned elsewhere: although they profess allegiance to Islam and to the path of spiritual poverty and spiritual discipline, and although some of them exhibit worship, devotion to Allah, spiritual ecstasy, love, asceticism, spiritual poverty, humility, gentleness, courtesy in speech and dealings, spiritual unveiling, the exercise of extraordinary powers, and the like—yet among some of them one also finds polytheism and other forms of unbelief, religious excess and innovations in Islam, disregard for much of what the Messenger brought, contempt for the law of Islam, lying, and deception