towards the physical beauty of women and boys in forbidden ways, to a degree not experienced by the people of the Sunnah who follow the law brought by Muhammad. The accounts of their conduct in this regard are too numerous to recount in detail in a book. Among them are hidden and open indecencies not found among others. Even the best of them incline towards young men, singing, and devotional listening, because of the comfort their souls find therein. Had they followed the Sunnah, they would have found relief from all this.

When Satan said to Abū Sa‘īd al-Kharrāz in a dream, “I have two subtle snares among you: devotional listening and keeping company with young men,” Abū Sa‘īd replied, “Few of our companions escape them.”

This has gone so far that [indeed, they] have such an intense love in their souls [for it] (1) that it has become interwoven with their path to Allah. When one of them gazes upon the object of his contemplation, he finds within himself a desire for his customary worship and asceticism that he does not experience without it. When listening to poems, he finds within himself a longing, eagerness, and vigour that he does not find when listening to the Quran. Thus they have fallen into misconception and desire. Satan was not content merely to make them fall into forbidden practices that lead them astray; he went so far as to make them regard these as worship, like those of whom Allah said:

“When they commit an indecency, they say, ‘We found our forefathers doing this, and Allah has commanded us to do it.’”

The verse continues. These are the ones who have neglected prayer and followed their desires. When they engage in devotional listening, they do so with longing, intense eagerness, and wholehearted love