claims to know the unseen future; to believe him, therefore, is effectively to deny that verse—and such denial is disbelief.

The third case is when a person questions the soothsayer solely to refute him, asking merely as a test. There is no harm in that. The Prophet ﷺ once asked Ibn Sayyād what he was hiding, and Ibn Sayyād answered, “ad-dukh,” meaning “smoke.” The Prophet ﷺ retorted, “Be gone! You will never exceed your station.” Hence, if someone interrogates a soothsayer to expose him and reveal his lies to the people, there is no blame—in fact, it is praiseworthy and desirable, for in it lies the undoing of falsehood.

Muʿāwiyah then asked the Messenger of Allah ﷺ another question: “Among us are men who take omens—what about that?” He replied, “That is only a feeling they find in their hearts; let it not hold them back.”

Tatayyur—omen-taking—is the pessimistic reading of events. The Arabs were especially prone to it with birds: if a bird flew to the right, it meant one thing; to the left, another; if it flew straight ahead, yet another; and if it turned back, still another—all according to their own superstitious conventions.