—not because he will be tormented in the Hereafter for defying the law of Muhammad or any other prophet.

Hence, when the pagan Turks first appeared and one of them was inclined to embrace Islam—before Islam had gained ascendancy over them—one of the philosophers in his company advised him not to do so, arguing, “That message is in Arabic, and your people have no need of his law.” Statements of this kind reveal that, in their judgment, the sharia brought by Muhammad is unnecessary for people such as you and your peers. It has even been said that the would-be convert whom his astrologer thus dissuaded was Hülegü himself.

When Hülegü later entered Syria, certain Syrian judges—men who venerated the Sufi philosophers like Ibn ʿArabi and the like—accepted appointment to the judiciary under his authority. Upon entering the city, one of those judges began lavishing praise on the infidel ruler, exalting him and listing what he claimed were his virtues. Someone present remarked, “If only he were a Muslim!” The judge retorted, “What need has he of Islam, whether he is Muslim or not?” Such a reply rests squarely on that same principle.

Accordingly, in their view a prophet resembles, in certain respects, the leading imams of the legal schools acknowledged by the theologians: Abu Ḥanīfah, Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Isḥāq ibn Rāhawayh, Sufyān al-Thawrī, al-Layth ibn Saʿd, al-Awzāʿī, Dāwūd ibn ʿAlī, and other luminaries among the jurist-scholars.