The Devils Deception by Imam Ibn AL-Jawzi

T H E D E V I L ' S
D E C E P T I O N S
Section Three:
Mention of some of their beliefs
Abii !:!amid al-Tiisi al-GhazalI says: the Batiniyyah are people who
profess Islam, and are inclined to Rejection; but both their beliefs
and their practices conflict with Islam. One of their doctrines is the
existence of two gods, from eternity, their existence having no commencement
in time, only one of the two is the cause of the existence
of the second. The prior of the two ought not to be described
as existent or non-existent, being neither, also being neither known
nor unknown, neither possessing attributes nor lacking them. From
the prior there arose the latter, who is the first created being, then
there arose the universal soul.
According to them, the Prophet is an expression for an individual
on whom a pure and saintly faculty has emanated from the prior
through the medium of the latter; Jibril ('alhis-saldm) they hold, is
an expression, for the intelligence which descends on him (the
Prophet(;i)), not for an individual. They are agreed that there must
be in every age an Imam who is infallible; maintaining the truth, to
whom resort should he made for the interpretation of the literal
expressions, equal to the Prophet (;i) in infallibility.
They reject the 'return' (in the sense of the Resurrection), holding
that return means the return of a thing to its origin, and that the soul
will return to its origin. As for the prescriptions of the law, it is
reported of them that they waive them altogether, and permit all
forbidden things; only when this is stated concerning them, they
deny it, vowing that there must be such prescriptions for a human
being, only he is released from them when he becomes acquainted
with the hidden meaning of the literal expressions. Being unable to
divert people from the Qur'an and the Sunnah, they diverted them
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