the Magian Persians and the Christian Romans, his prohibition against imitating the pagan Greek Romans and pagan Indians is far more emphatic. If the imitation of Jews, Christians, Persians and Romans that has crept into some Muslims is blameworthy before Allah and His Messenger, then the imitation of pagan Greeks, Indians, Turks and other nations further removed from Islam than the People of the Book, the Persians and the Romans is all the more deserving of blame before Allah Most High—and of greater blame still.

These nations, further removed from Islam, through whom later Muslims have been tested, are worse than the nations through whom the earliest Muslims were tested. This is because the Muslims then were more accomplished and greater in knowledge and religious commitment. When tested by peoples superior to these, the Muslims would overcome them through their superior knowledge and religious commitment. As for these later peoples, although the Muslims fall short of their predecessors, their superiority to these peoples is evident because those peoples are so far removed from Islam.

Yet when religious innovations proliferated among later Muslims, some of these peoples gained ascendancy over them and confused them about their religion. The philosophers’ specious arguments came to seem more formidable to these Muslims than to others, just as fighting the disbelieving Turks seemed more formidable to the people of that age than fighting their predecessors. For they were tested by the swords of those disbelievers and the tongues of those philosophers, while deficiencies in their faith had brought about weakness in knowledge and jihad. The same was true of many Arabs in the time of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace: the two cases are alike.