him in the form of an angel, and that this apparition is the fruit of the shaykh’s blessing—whereas in truth the being that has appeared to them is nothing but a devil among the devils.

This is a tribulation we know all too well; in our own era, and in former times as well, countless people have been tried by it. I can name many of them and recount several specific incidents.

These same devils also mislead those who worship at graves, just as they once misled the pagan Arabs and others.

The Greeks, too, were idol-worshipping polytheists who practiced sorcery—this is reported about Aristotle and others. Devils led them astray, and it was through the devils that their sorcery was brought to completion. Yet they often failed to recognize that the source was demonic; indeed, some of them denied the existence of devils altogether, imagining that everything proceeded from the power of the soul, from purely natural causes, or from celestial forces. According to Ibn Sīnā and those who follow him, these three constitute the causes of the world’s marvels.

Such people remain ignorant of the other deeds of the devils—whose influence for evil in the world surpasses all of this—and they are equally ignorant of the angels of God, through whom every good in the heavens and the earth is effected. Their notion that angels are the “ten intellects,” or the virtuous faculties of the soul, and that devils are the soul’s vicious faculties, has been shown false by rational proofs and, more decisively, by the very necessities of the Messenger’s religion.

If the polytheism and unbelief of these people—precisely in matters of God’s oneness and worshipping Him alone—are even greater than the polytheism and unbelief of the pagan Arabs, what perfection of the soul can possibly lie in such delusions?

Topics like this require lengthy treatment, and we have discussed portions of them elsewhere. What concerns us here is to set forth what these people claim about logical demonstration.