Here he had to encounter bitter opposition from the orthodox clergy and their followers, among whom he was regarded as a freethinker.
In Persia at the present day a Safi is much the same as a freethinker?
No; the great freethinker, with his genuine ability and honesty, does not in practice destroy Christianity.
Although some of his quatrains are purely mystic and pantheistic, most of them bear quite another stamp; they are the breviary of a radical freethinker, who protests in the most forcible manner both against the narrowness, bigotry and uncompromising austerity of the orthodox ulema and the eccentricity, hypocrisy and wild ravings of advanced Sufis, whom he successfully combats with their own weapons, using the whole mystic terminology simply to ridicule mysticism itself.
The Lay Monastery, the Censor, the Freethinker, the Plain Dealer, the Champion, and other works of the same kind had had their short day.