‘Have you seen your Lord?’ He replied, ‘No.’ Abū Bakr asked him, and he replied, ‘Yes.’” And the claim that “he gave two contradictory answers to a single question because the two questioners’ circumstances differed”—all this is the speech of liars and fabricators; indeed, it is the speech of heretical hypocrites. For the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said:

“It is not fitting for a prophet to give a treacherous glance.”

This hadith appears in Sunan Abī Dāwūd and elsewhere:

“In the year of the Conquest, he had declared the lives of several men forfeit, including Ibn Abī Sarh. ‘Uthmān brought him to pledge allegiance to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. He turned away from him twice or three times, then accepted his pledge. He then said, ‘Was there no man of sound judgment among you who, seeing me turn away from this man, would kill him?’ One of them said, ‘Why did you not signal to me with your eyes, O Messenger of Allah?’ He replied, ‘It is not fitting for a prophet to give a treacherous glance.’”

This emphatically affirms the complete agreement between his outward and inward states, his private and public conduct: he does not conceal anything contrary to what he outwardly displays, as scheming hypocrites habitually do.

There is no doubt that the Qarmatians and philosophers like them say that he outwardly displayed the opposite of what he concealed, and that he addressed the common people with statements by which he intended something contrary to what he led them to understand, for their own good, since he could reform them only by this means. Ibn Sīnā, the authors of the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, and others like them among the philosophers and esoteric Qarmatians made this claim. Indeed, Ibn Sīnā and his household were followers of al-Hākim, the Qarmatian ‘Ubaydid ruler in Egypt. Just as their position is among the most flagrant expressions of disbelief, so too is their ignorance among the greatest.