This erotic and bacchanalian symbolism is not, of course, peculiar to the mystical poetry of Islam, but nowhere else is it displayed so opulently and in such perfection. It has often been misunderstood by European critics, one of whom even now can describe the ecstasies of the Sūfīs as “inspired partly by wine and strongly tinged with sensuality.” As regards the whole body of Sūfīs, the charge is altogether false. No intelligent and unprejudiced student of their writings could have made it, and we ought to have been informed on what sort of evidence it is based. There are black sheep in every flock, and amongst the Sūfīs we find many hypocrites, debauchees, and drunkards who bring discredit on the pure brethren. But it is just as unfair to judge Sūfism in general by the excesses of these impostors as it would be to condemn all Christian mysticism on the ground that certain sects and individuals are immoral. “God is the Sāqī[10] and the Wine: He knows what manner of love is mine,” said Jalāluddīn. Ibn al-ʿArabī declares that no religion is more sublime than a religion of love and longing for God. Love is the essence of all creeds: the true mystic welcomes it whatever guise it may assume. [10] Cupbearer. “My heart has become capable of every form: it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks, And a temple for idols, and the pilgrim’s Kaʿba, and the tables of the Tora and the book of the Koran. I follow the religion of Love, whichever way his camels take. My religion and my faith is the true religion. We have a pattern in Bishr, the lover of Hind and her sister, and in Qays and Lubnā, and in Mayya and Ghaylān.” Commenting on the last verse, the poet writes: “Love, _quâ_ love, is one and the same reality to those Arab lovers and to me; but the objects of our love are different, for they loved a phenomenon, whereas I love the Real. They are a pattern to us, because God only afflicted them with love for human beings in order that He might show, by means of them, the falseness of those who pretend to love Him, and yet feel no such transport and rapture in loving Him as deprived those enamoured men of their reason, and made them unconscious of themselves.”