As for the Islamic law and way, these belong to the community of Muhammad, may Allah Most High bless him and grant him peace:

“The best nation brought forth for mankind.”

The Medinan surahs were revealed with this law and way, for it was in the Prophet’s city that laws were prescribed, practices established, and legal rulings, obligations, and prescribed penalties revealed.

This affirmation of Allah’s oneness is what the messengers brought and the scriptures were revealed with, and it is to this that the masters of the spiritual path and the scholars of religion point. Yet some who experience spiritual states may, in a deficient state of self-effacement, undergo intoxication and lose awareness of what is other. Intoxication is ecstasy without discernment.

In that state, a person may say, “Glory be to me,” or, “There is nothing in this robe but Allah,” or similar utterances attributed to Abū Yazīd al-Bistāmī or others who were otherwise sound. The words of an intoxicated person are to be put aside, neither narrated nor passed on, provided his intoxication was not caused by something forbidden, whether an act of worship or some prohibited means. If its cause was forbidden, however, the intoxicated person is not excused. In this respect, there is no difference between bodily and spiritual intoxication: bodies become intoxicated through food and drink, souls through forms, and spirits through sounds.

It was in such a state that some fell into error by claiming union and actual indwelling, like the Christians’ claims concerning Christ, the extremists’ claims concerning ʿAlī and the Prophet’s household, and the claims of certain ignorant extremists concerning such figures as al-Hallāj, al-Hākim in Egypt, or others. They may have confused unity in kind and judgment with actual identity of essence.