  The importance of speaking in different ways to different people is a cornerstone not only of Maimonides but of Islamic political philosophy more broadly. In fact, in these contexts, religion is itself understood as the rhetorically persuasive means, par excellence, for directing the average person towards appropriate living. Starting with al-Farabi, we find a distinction drawn between the ideas of philosophy and those of religion: while the former are ideas known through intellect and arrived at via demonstration, the latter are ideas known only through imaginings of likenesses, and arrived at through persuasion (AH 77). Drawing on a Platonic distinction between truths-as-they-are (as known to the intellect) on the one hand, and the mere likenesses (or, pale reflections) of those truths on the other, al-Farabi explains the relationship between philosophy and religion as follows: