Muhammad: A Revolutionary Life

Muhammad's attitude was therefore implicitly a revolutionary one. The mystic stood in direct relation to the Being of Beings, who showed himself to him and spoke to him. His own, individual experience had an absolute value which to him was not in doubt and which had nothing to do with the rules governing social life, even if these were only an extension of some previous revelation of the same kind. Like the rational theorist who sees no flaw in his reasoning, he could not feel bound by the blind force of habit, even if disguised by secondary and transparent rationalizations. In the same way, Leszek Kolakowski has described mysticism as the revolt of the individual conscience against the system, the "apparatus."

~ Maxime Rodinson, Muhammad, 82.