their slaughtered animals or to marry their women. Even were they to display belief in the prophets, such belief is of the same order as the philosophers’ so-called belief in the prophets, and the Sabian philosophers belong to this category.

As for accepting jizyah from them, the matter is disputed. Those jurists who allow jizyah to be taken from people other than the People of the Scripture—just as it is taken from the Magians—also permit taking it from this group. This is the position of Mālik, Abū Ḥanīfah, and Aḥmad in one of the two reports from him. Those who restrict the jizyah to the People of the Scripture do not accept it from these Sābians unless they first adopt the religion of the People of the Scripture; this is the view of al-Shāfiʿī and of Aḥmad in the other report. Abū Saʿīd al-Isṭakhrī issued a fatwa that the jizyah should not be accepted from them at all, and a number of jurists contested his ruling.

Philosophers’ “faith” akin to the faith of hypocrites

Many philosophers and other heretics outwardly adopt the religious rites of Muslims, Jews, or Christians, while inwardly denying the realities brought by the prophets. Like the hypocrites among the Muslims, they are treated in this world according to the visible rulings of Islam, yet in the Hereafter they will be in the lowest depths of the Fire.

Should someone object, “But these philosophers believe in Allah and the Last Day, for they affirm the Necessary Existent and the return of souls,” the reply is that the Christians—both they and their forebears—are better than these philosophers, and yet even they do not truly believe in Allah or the Last Day, nor do they forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, nor do they adhere to the religion of—