Allah took Abraham as a close friend or spoke directly to Moses. In their view, He is described only through negation and denial—for example, that He is neither a body, a substance, nor an accident, and is neither within the world nor outside it—or through a relation, such as being the source of the world or the First Cause; or through an attribute combining negation and relation, such as being intellecting, intelligible, and intellect.

They hold that Allah does not single out Moses, rather than others, by speaking to him, nor Muhammad, rather than others, by sending him as a messenger. For they do not affirm that He has detailed knowledge of the things known, let alone a detailed will. Rather, what they affirm for Him—if they affirm anything—is general, universal knowledge and a general, universal purpose.

Those among them who affirm prophethood say that it is an emanation flowing into the prophet’s soul, of the same kind as that which flows into all other souls. The prophet, however—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—has a more perfect capacity to receive it, such that he knows what others do not know, hears what others do not hear, sees what others do not see, and his soul can accomplish what other souls cannot. The speech uttered by the prophets is thus their own speech and their own words. These are the ones who say of the Quran:

“This is nothing but the word of a human being.”

For “the solitary one,” namely al-Walīd ibn al-Mughīra, was one of their kind: he belonged to those polytheists who were also Sabians. For the Sabians, like the People of the Book, are sometimes classified by Allah as a group within the polytheists, and sometimes as a group distinct from them, as the Most High says:

“Those who disbelieved among the People of the Book and the polytheists were not to desist.”