and devote themselves and their wealth to it. They may even offer their wives and sons, tolerating sexual dishonour within their families to achieve their aims. One of them brings his son and gives him to the shaykh, allowing him and his followers to do whatever they wish with him; they call him a hiwār. If he is good-looking, the shaykh keeps him exclusively for himself. His family considers this a blessing bestowed upon him by the shaykh, and all modesty between the boy’s mother and father and the Sufi devotees disappears.

When they pray, they pray like the hypocrites, rising reluctantly to prayer,

“showing off before people and remembering Allah only a little.”

They have thus neglected prayer and followed their desires. Yet they may abstain from some of the wholesome things Allah has permitted them and strive diligently in worship and remembrance, while combining these with religious innovation and the unlawful practices mentioned earlier. It is this innovation that has led them to follow their desires and neglect their prayers. For the revealed law is like Noah’s Ark: whoever boards it is saved, and whoever stays behind drowns. These people have stayed behind and drowned through their love. Yet Allah accepts the repentance of those who repent.

When those who follow the law brought by Muhammad fall into sin, repentance does not impose burdens and shackles upon them; rather, it belongs to the accommodating way of pure monotheism. For the people of religious innovation, however, repentance may become burdens and shackles, as it was for the monks before us. When one of them falls into sin, he cannot escape its evil except through severe affliction, because he has departed from the Sunnah.