and corruption outweighing that benefit. Such listening is to the spirit what wine is to the body: it acts upon souls as the intoxicating force of wine does. Hence it leaves its devotees more intoxicated than wine does: they experience pleasure without discernment, just as a wine drinker does. Indeed, what they experience is more abundant and intense than what the wine drinker experiences. It turns them away from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer more powerfully than wine does, and causes greater enmity and hatred among them than wine does, until some kill others without even touching them with a hand, but rather through the devils that attach themselves to them.
They experience satanic states in which devils descend upon them and speak through their tongues, just as a jinn speaks through the tongue of someone possessed. This may be speech resembling that of non-Arabs whose language is not understood, such as Turkish, Persian, or another language, even though the person possessed by the devil is an Arab who cannot speak that language. Rather, the speech resembles that of those who are brethren of those devils. Alternatively, it may be speech that makes no sense and has no intelligible meaning. Those who experience spiritual unveiling know this through “direct witnessing and firsthand observation.”
Those who enter fire despite their departure from the Sharia belong to this category. Devils possess such a person so completely that his body loses sensation. Indeed, someone possessed may be beaten severely, yet he does not feel it, nor