This is so even though their followers have gone beyond what their masters and leaders instituted, adding indecencies that even monkeys would not tolerate. For it is established in Sahīh al-Bukhārī:

“During the pre-Islamic era, Abū Imrān saw a male monkey commit adultery with a female monkey, whereupon the monkeys gathered against him and stoned him.”

People in our own time have witnessed similar things among animals other than monkeys, even birds. Even if the aforementioned practice of keeping company with “beardless youths” were free of the forbidden act, it would still create a risk of it and be a cause of it. For this reason, the shaykhs who knew the path to Allah used to warn against it.

Fath al-Mawsilī said: “I met thirty of the abdāl, and whenever I parted from any of them, he would forbid me to keep company with adolescent boys.”

Maʿrūf al-Karkhī said: “They used to forbid that.”

One of the Successors said: “I fear for a young ascetic no more from a wild beast sitting beside him than I do from an adolescent boy sitting beside him.”

Sufyān al-Thawrī and Bishr al-Hāfī said: “With a woman there is one devil, and with an adolescent boy there are two.”

One of them said: “No servant falls from Allah’s favour without Allah afflicting him with the companionship of these adolescent boys.”

The temptation of forms and sounds has brought upon ascetics harm whose extent only Allah knows, so much so that even the greatest shaykhs have acknowledged it. Those among them whom Allah rescued through His mercy repented. It is well known that this amounts to following one’s desires without guidance from Allah:

“And who is more astray than one who follows his own desires without guidance from Allah?”

Whoever regards this as lawful or