who has no partner. Worship gathers together knowledge of Him, love for Him, and humble servitude to Him. For this very purpose God sent the messengers and revealed the divine scriptures: all of them summon people to worship God alone, without partner.

These thinkers, however, claim that the rites of worship enjoined by the messengers were intended only to refine the soul’s morals so that it might be ready for the knowledge they allege to be the soul’s perfection, or to set the household and the city in order—what they call “practical wisdom.” Accordingly, they reduce the acts of worship to mere instruments for attaining the “knowledge” they promote, and therefore regard those rites as no longer incumbent upon anyone who has already reached the supposed goal. This is precisely what the Ismāʿīlī unbelievers do, as well as others who have embraced full-blown unbelief—or part of it—while styling themselves Sufis, theologians, Shi‘ites, or otherwise.

Refutation of the claim that faith is nothing but knowledge of God:

The Jahmiyyah asserted:

“Faith is nothing but knowledge of God.”

Though this statement is better than the philosophers’ claim, it still defines faith as knowledge of God alone, with whatever necessarily accompanies that—knowledge of His angels, His books, and His messengers. The philosophers, for their part, consider perfection to lie in knowing absolute existence, even in its truest sense. Yet even if such an absolute had any concrete reality, it would not perfect the soul unless it also knew its Creator, exalted is He.

Thus the Jahmiyyah rank among the gravest innovators in Islam; indeed, more than one scholar has declared them to be outside of