Thus, belief in the angels is one of the pillars of Islam. Whoever denies their existence and says, “There are no angels because we cannot see them,” is a disbeliever, an atheist, a renegade—may Allah protect us—for he has refused to believe in the unseen. The same ruling applies to anyone who reinterprets the angels and claims, “The angels are merely ideas, not physical beings; they are the thoughts that come to a person—if a thought is good it is an angel, and if it is evil it is a devil.” Such a statement is pure atheism, Allah forbid, and—regrettably—it appears in Tafsīr al-Manār, cited by Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā from his teacher Muḥammad ʿAbduh.

This is the rhetoric of the philosophers; it is false. Whoever believes it is a disbeliever. We hope that the author merely reported it without subscribing to it, yet to transmit it without any rebuttal is dangerous. Such discourse is falsehood and outright rejection of the angels. We ask Allah for safety and well-being.

Therefore, a person must not rely on his own intellect and reasoning, or quote from philosophers and heretics, in matters of religion and the unseen; rather, he must rely on the Quran and the Sunnah—that is obligatory. Tafsīr al-Manār states that this view was taken from the book Ihyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn (The Revival of the Religious Sciences) by al-Ghazālī. Allah knows best.