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that the believer must have in his heart such knowledge of Allah and love for Him that the One he knows and loves leaves effects in his heart resembling indwelling in certain respects. This is not the indwelling of the very essence of the One known and loved; rather, it is faith in Him and knowledge of His names and attributes. Allah Most High says:

“The Light of the heavens and the earth. The likeness of His light is as a niche…”

—and so the verse continues. Ubayy ibn Kaʿb said:

“The likeness of His light in the believer’s heart.”

These, then, are the lights that arise in believers’ hearts. Concerning His words, Most High:

“Whoever rejects faith, his deeds have become worthless,”

it has been said that this refers to rejecting that faith. Whoever rejects acknowledgment—which consists of affirming Allah, His angels, His Books and His messengers, and submitting to Him, encompassing both belief and submission to the prescription of obligations, the prohibition of forbidden things and the permission of permissible things—is a disbeliever. For the intended benefit to us of the revelation of the Books and the sending of the messengers is that we attain faith. Whoever rejects this therefore rejects those.

This may be called a likeness and a representation, for it may be said that knowledge is a representation of what is known within the knower. Likewise, love involves a representation of the beloved within the lover. Some people claim that every instance of knowledge and love involves this representation, as some philosophers maintain. Others deny that any such representation arises in any instance of knowledge or love.

The precise conclusion is that mental representations and imagined images may arise in some who know and love, to the point that