6. Al-An'aam

And who does greater evil than he who invents a lie against God, by affirming the existence of any other than Him, or denies, His attributes by manifesting the attributes of his own soul and thus commits idolatrous association with Him, when the utmost in evildoing is to associate [others] with God. They the evildoers shall not prosper, because of their being veiled by what they have placed in the place of God's essence and attributes.

And on the day We shall gather them all together, at the source of the union of the Essence, then We shall say to those who associated [others] with God, by affirming [the existence of] others: 'Where are those associates of yours whom you were claimingḍ', for the universal annihilation in the self-disclosure of the Essence.

Then, upon the self-disclosure of the state and the issuing forth of all before the Vanquishing King, the ultimate in their idolatrous association and its consequence, was only to say, 'By God, our Lord we were never idolaters', because of the impossibility of anything existing with which to associate God.

If you could see when they are made to stand before, the fire of privation and the torture of the configurations of their dark souls and the mastery that forms of forged things have acquired over them in chastisement; and they say, 'Oh if only we might be returned and not deny the signs of our Lord, such as the self-disclosures of His attributes, and be among the believers!', who are affirmers of the Oneness, then [our situation] would be what cannot be described.

No, what they had been concealing beforehand now appears to them, and even if they were sent back, they would return to what had been prohibited to them. This is an allusion to the Day of Resurrection, which is the day of the unveiling of states and the manifestation of secrets, the day secret cores will be tried [86:9] and hidden things will become manifest. There will be many who were counted among the renunciants in this world and who wore the color of the friends and the dress of the familiar but who will see on that day the burning brand of wretchedness on their own foreheads, having been brought down to the dwelling place of the strangers. There will also be many whom you recognized as shameless and knew as bound for the manacles, who had nothing in this world, who were no one and nameless, yet in whose name on that day will be brought the treasuries of the unseen and the robes of generosity. The holy ones of the Higher Plenum and the dwellers in the Gardens of the Shelter will be staring and astonished at His work. It will be as the poet said: Many a prayerful pir will be left behind without steed, many a tavern-going scoundrel will saddle a roaring lion. [DS 110] And even it they were sent back, they would return to what had been prohibited to them. Even if the folk of punishment were sent back to this world of theirs, they would return to their refusal and denial. And even if the folk of limpidness and loyalty were sent back to this world of theirs, they would return to the beauty of their deeds.

If you could see when they are made to stand before their Lord, at the major resurrection, and this [that follows] is an imagined representation of their state in terms of their veiledness and distance, for otherwise there would be no words and no response at that [moment] because of their being deprived from the presence and the witnessing, even though they might be at the source of nondelimited union. Know that 'to stand before' (waqafa ʿalā) something is different from 'to stand with' (waqafa maʿa) it, for to stand with something is voluntary and willingly done, whereas to stand before something can only be by coercion or out of aversion. Thus the one who stands with God in [his] affirmation of Oneness - like the one who said, 'Desire stands whence you [stand] and I can neither walk behind it nor ahead [of it]' - will not be made to stand for the reckoning. Rather he will be among those of the greatest prize of whom He says: and restrain yourself along with those who call upon their Lord at morning and evening, desiring His countenance [Q. 18:28]; you are not accountable for them in anything [Q. 6:52]; and he will be rewarded by all kinds of bliss in all of the gardens. As for the one who stands with the other through idolatrous association, he will stand before the Lord and will be chastised with all manner of chastisement in the [various] levels of all the fires, because of his veil being denser and his unbelief greater. As for the one who stands with the human realm (nāsūt) by his love of pleasures and desires and lingers in the veil of the vestiges [thereof], he will stand before the spiritual realm (malakūt) and chastised with the fires of privation from what is desired and unleashed on him shall be the Zabāniya angels [cf. Q. 96:18] of [his] dark configurations and he will be bounded together with the devils of [his] ruinous caprices. As for the one who stands with the acts, having emerged from the veil of the vestiges, he will stand before the realm of divine power (jabarūt) and will be chastised with the fire of ambition and hope and is returned to the station of the spiritual realm (malakūt).