worship and Sufism may fall into such things. They have even deemed the worship of celestial bodies and idols permissible because of the extraordinary phenomena they have witnessed in connection with them—phenomena that devils help them bring about. Through these, they achieve some of their aims involving wrongdoing and obscenities. So long as they attain these ends, they care nothing about associating partners with Allah or disbelieving in Him and His Book. Nor do they scruple to teach this to people and have them venerate them, for the authority or wealth they stand to gain.

Even if they know that it is disbelief and associating partners with Allah, they practise it and call others to it. Rather, they have developed doubt and misgivings about what the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, brought, or have come to believe that the Messenger addressed the masses with things that have no underlying reality, for the benefit of the masses. Such is the claim made by some philosophizers, heretics, and esotericists. Some from both of the aforementioned groups have adopted these views.

In this they have imitated the Persians, the Romans, and others. The Persians venerated lights and prostrated themselves before the sun and fire. Before Christianity, the Romans were polytheists who worshipped celestial bodies and idols. Those who have thus resembled the Persians and Romans are worse than those who have resembled the Jews and Christians. The latter imitated the People of the Book in matters that had been altered or abrogated, whereas the former imitated those without a revealed scripture: the Magians and polytheists among the Persians and Romans, and those among the Indians and Greeks who followed the same path.

The doctrine of the heretical esotericists is derived from the Magian belief in two primal principles