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Objection: "If we accept this account, then there can be no concepts of lawful or unlawful."
Reply: This is a completely unrealistic claim. The fact that we cannot be in direct contact with the phys-
ical world does not do away with the secret of the test. Even though we never get to know the original of the

matter, what God has said to be forbidden is forbidden, and what is lawful is lawful. For example, God has
forbidden the eating of pork. Saying, "I only confront the perception of pork" and then going on to eat it is
evidently dishonest and unintelligent. Alternatively, saying "I only know the images of these people in my
mind, so it does not matter if I lie to them" is not something that anyone who fears God and has understood

what we are discussing could ever do. That applies to all the limits, commands and prohibitions imposed
by God. The fact of what we are discussing does not do away with giving alms, for instance. The fact that
the alms we give exist in the minds of the people we give them to does not mean we need not perform this
obligation. God has created the whole world as a totality of perceptions, however, within these perceptions

we are still charged with abiding by what the Koran has revealed.
In the past, some people twisted this truth to try and do away with the concepts of lawful and unlaw-
ful. However, they already possessed a twisted belief system, and they may have wanted to use this truth
for their own ends. Yet it should be understood that the conclusion they arrived at was incorrect.

In conclusion, anyone who honestly considers the situation will clearly see that, for the purposes of the
test which God gives us, it is not necessary to interact with the matter itself. God has created this test within
the world of images. There is no basis to the suggestion that one needs to know the original of the matter to
pray or distinguish between what is lawful and unlawful. Furthermore, the important thing is the soul. It is

the soul that will be punished or rewarded with blessings in the Hereafter. For that reason, the fact that we
confront an illusion of matter in our minds does not prevent us doing what is lawful and avoiding what is
unlawful or carrying out our religious obligations.
At this point, we need to be clear that those who claim they have no responsibility for images will say,

"We thought we were not responsible, that is why we are here," when they are sent to Hell. These people,
even though they will understand that Hell is an image, in the same way as this world is, will still suffer its
torments forever.

Objection: "Everybody says leaves are green when they look at a tree. Since everyone describes this tree in
the same way, that means it does not exist in my mind alone."

Reply: What people around us call green, we also call green. However, is the color they call green the
same green we see in our minds, or do they refer to what we see as blue, and call it green? There is no way
we can ever know. As we have already seen, there are no colors outside our mind. There are only different
length light waves outside, and it is our brains which process these into colors. Thus colors form within us,

and no one else can ever see the color we see in our brains.
This is a subject that has been discussed by many philosophers and scientists, and the latter have agreed
that "We can never say whether someone else sees the rose which we see as red in the same way as we do,
or whether what we see as blue he refers to as red." This applies to perceptions, not just colors. Daniel

Dennett, for instance, expresses his thoughts on and interest in the subject:

Locke discussed it in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), and many of my students tell me that as
young children they hit upon the same idea for themselves, and were fascinated by it. The idea seems to be
transparently clear and safe:

"There are the ways things look to me, and sound to me, and smell to me, and so forth. That much is obvious. I
wonder, though, if the ways things appear to me are the same as the ways things appear to other people."

Philosophers have composed many different variations on this theme, but the classic version is the interpersonal
version: How do I know that you and I see the same subjective color when we look at something? Since we both
learned our color words by being shown public colored objects, our verbal behavior will match even if we expe-
rience entirely different subjective colors – even if the way red things look to me is the way green things look to

you, for instance. 54

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