false doctrines which imply that a human being shares in some of Allah’s exclusive attributes—for example, by knowing all things or having power over all things, and the like—as some of them say concerning the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—and concerning their shaykhs: “The knowledge of any one of them is coextensive with Allah’s knowledge, and his power is coextensive with Allah’s power; thus, he knows whatever Allah knows and has power over whatever Allah has power over(1).”

These doctrines and others like them are of the same kind as the claims made by the Christians and by those who go to extremes regarding Ali. They are false by the consensus of Muslim scholars(2). Some of them, however, attribute to one of these figures things that may legitimately be attributed to the prophets and righteous believers as miraculous gifts, such as an answered prayer, an unveiling(3) of the kind experienced by the righteous, and the like.

Such things occur frequently among people who are known to exist [and have been witnessed firsthand](4). As for those who attribute them to someone whose existence is unknown, although they err by attributing them to a nonexistent person, their error is like that of someone who believes that certain men among the friends of Allah live in such-and-such a town when no one of that description is there, or who believes that particular people are friends of Allah when they are not. There is no doubt that this is error, ignorance, and misguidance into which many people fall. Yet the error and misguidance(5) of the Imāmiyya are more reprehensible and more serious.

The fourth aspect: It may be said that the sound view held by the most discerning scholars is that Elijah,