6. Al-An'aam

And warn therewith those who fear, that is to say, warn with what has been revealed to you the prepared ones who are the folk of fear and hope, and turn away from those whose hearts have hardened for it [the warning] brings no results with them, as He said at the beginning of the Book [that It is] a guidance for the God-fearing [Q. 2:2], that they shall be gathered to their Lord: apart from Him they have no protector and no intercessor, so that they know through the purity of their preparedness that the return to God is inevitable, that they might fear to be gathered before Him in a state in which they are veiled from Him by the veils of their attributes and acts, with no protector other than God to assist them and deliver them from the humiliation of remoteness and the chastisement of privation and no intercessor to intercede for them and bring them near to Him and bestow dignity on them, because all essences and powers are annihilated in God and [in] His vanquishing of them, as He says the day when they will emerge nothing about them will be hidden from God. 'To whom does sovereignty belong todayḍ' 'To God, the One, the Vanquisher' [Q. 40:16]; and that they might be admonished by listening to it [sc. the revelation] so that there arises in them hope [for salvation] and they then embark upon the wayfaring in earnest and with industry, so that they might be wary, that they might be wary of the veils of their acts, their attributes and their essences and disengage from these through effacement and annihilation in God. It would be correct [to understand] that the protector [here] is the heart and the intercessor the spirit, in other words, that they have not yet arrived at the station of the heart, which is the protector of the soul that delivers it from chastisement and assist it against privation, nor [have they arrived] at the station of the spirit that it might intercede for them by reinforcing [the soul] with the support of propinquity, deriving its strength from God, and [by] acting as a means between them and God.

And drive not away those who supplicate their Lord morning and evening, desiring His face. The unbelievers came before MuṣṬafā and said, “O MuḤammad, we want to have faith in you, but it is beneath our dignity to sit with these beggars and smell the unpleasant scent of their shabby clothes. Keep them away from you so that we may have faith in you.” God's Messenger desired eagerly for them to have faith, which is why God said, “Perhaps thou art consuming thyself with grief that they do not have faith in this talk” [18:6]. One narrative has reported that God's Messenger sent ʿUmar with a message to these poor men, telling them to come less often for a few days so that perhaps those people would have faith. ʿUmar had not taken three steps before Gabriel came and brought this verse-“And drive not away! O MuḤammad, do not drive them away, for I have not driven them away. Do not caress those whom I have not called.” Yes, those accepted by the Presence are one thing, those driven away by severance something else! Those poor men were the ones called by And God invites to the abode of peace [10:25], and those estranged ones were the ones driven away by Slink into it, and do not talk to Me! [23:108]. God's Messenger called ʿUmar back. The unbelievers returned and said, “If you can, at least give us a turn one day and them a turn another day, and then we may have faith in you.” God's Messenger aspired to set these turns as they wanted. Gabriel came and brought this verse: “And keep thy soul patient with those who supplicate their Lord [18:28]. Be with them, for I am with them. You should want them, for I want them.” When the unbelievers despaired of his setting down turns day by day, they returned and said, “If you do not set down turns, we allow that. We will sit along with them for a time, and you look at us, not at them. You show respect to us, and then we will have faith in you.” MuṣṬafā called ʿUmar and sent him to the poor men to make their hearts happy and to seek their heart's approval for this so that perhaps those unbelievers would have faith.

And even so We have tried, that is, with the like of such tremendous trial and affliction, We have tried, some of them, who are the veiled, by others, for those who are veiled, seeing from those [others] nothing but their form and their evil state outwardly as well as their poverty and need and not seeing their worth and their [spiritual] level and their goodly state inwardly, despise them and their eyes scorn them with regard to what they enjoy of wealth, repute, comfort and an easy life, and so they say [the following] about them: 'Are these the ones whom God has favoured from among usḍ', with guidance, sarcastically, when by God these they are the ones whose living is the most wholesome, their state and their waystation the most exalted and their measure and level the most magnificent before God and before those who know them, as Noah, peace be upon him, said Nor do I say to those whom your eyes scorn that God will not give them any good [Q. 11:31]: nay indeed, good and nothing but good is what God has given them. Is God not best aware of those who are thankfulḍ, who are thankful to Him in reality by employing the grace of their existence, their attributes and their limbs and what He sustains them with in the way of provisions and sources of livelihood in acts of obedience to God. Thus they give thanks to Him in return for the outward grace by worshipping [Him] and conceptualising this [grace] as issuing from the Gracious One and expending it in acts that are pleasing to God; and in return for the grace of [having] limbs [they give thanks to Him] by using these [limbs] to worship Him and to wayfare upon His path, to actualise knowledge of Him and to know His attributes; and in return for the grace of attributes [they thank Him] by effacing them in God and by admitting their inability to [truly] know Him, thank Him and worship Him; and in return for the grace of existence [they thank Him] by means of annihilation in the source of presential vision such that God shows His appreciation of their effort by means of [granting them] existence bestowed from [His Name] the Truth and teaches them that He is the Appreciative One who is thanked for Himself by means of Himself, and that none except Him is able to [truly] thank Him. Hence they say, 'Glory be to You: we have not come to know You in the way You truly deserve. Glory be to You: we have not worshipped You as You truly deserve to be worshipped'. That is His knowledge of their gratitude and His recompense [of it] from Him.

And when those who have faith in Our signs come to thee, say, “Peace be upon you. Your Lord has written mercy against Himself, that whosoever of you does an ugly deed in ignorance, and thereafter repents and makes wholesome, He is forgiving, ever-merciful.” “The faithful are one thing, the recognizers something else. The faithful first look at the artifacts and the signs, then they reach Us from the signs. The recognizers first reach Us, then they return from Us to the signs. “O MuḤammad! Unto those who have faith in Us by the intermediary of the signs, convey Our greeting of peace by the intermediary of yourself! Unto those who recognize Us without interme- diary and find Us without the artifacts, We will convey Our greetings of peace without intermedi- ary.” That is in His words, “Peace-a word from an ever-merciful Lord” [36:58]. The Pir of the Tariqah said, “O God, he who recognizes You through the artifacts depends on the secondary causes, he who recognizes You through the attributes is imprisoned by reports, and he who recognizes You by allusion seeks companionship. He who is snatched away by You is protected from himself.” Although He has turned you over to the angel who writes your slips against you, He Himself has undertaken to write mercy for you. His writing for you is beginningless, and that writing against you is temporal. The temporal does not nullify the beginningless. WāsiṬī said, “By His mercy they arrived at worshiping Him. It is not that by worshiping Him they arrived at His mercy. By His mercy they attained what is with Him, not by their acts, for the Prophet said, 'Not even I, unless God envelops me with His mercy.'” Whosoever of you does an ugly deed in ignorance, and thereafter repents and makes whole- some, He is forgiving, ever-merciful. It has been narrated in a report, “You called upon Me, and I said 'Here I am!' You asked from Me, and I bestowed upon you. You stood up against Me, and I gave you respite. You left Me, and I took care of you. You disobeyed Me, and I curtained you. If you return to Me, I will accept you. If you turn away from Me, I will wait for you.” He is saying, “My servants, My creatures! You called out to Me, I answered you with 'Here I am!' You asked for blessings from Me, I bestowed gifts upon you.

And thus We distinguish the signs, that is, just like that clarification that We have made to these believers, We clarify to you Our attributes, and that it may become clear [to you] the way, of those who are veiled by their attributes, those who act on them in the [evil] way that they do, which is their crime.

And with Him are the keys of the Unseen, to the end [of the verse]: know that the unseen is made up of levels, the first of which is the unseen of unseens which is the knowledge of God called first solicitude; then comes the unseen of the world of spirits which is the engraving in an all-encompassing manner of the forms of all that has existed and will exist from pre-eternity and sempiternity in the first intelligible world which is the spirit of the world called the Mother Book, which is the preceding decree; then comes the unseen of the world of the hearts which is that very engraving itself differentiated in cognitive detail universally and particularly in the world of the universal soul, which is the heart of the world called the Preserved Tablet; then comes the unseen of the imaginal world, which is the engraving of engendered beings in their entirety within the particular souls of the celestial spheres imprinted in the celestial bodies therein entified, individuated and joined to their moments in accordance to the very thing that occurs: this world is the one referred to in the [revelations of the] law as the heaven of this world (al-samāÌ al-dunyā), since it is the nearest of the levels of the unseen to the world of witnessing and the tablet of divine predestination, which is the differentiated form of His decree. God's knowledge, which is the first solicitude, entails His encompassing of all things by the presence of His essence in all of these worlds, which constitute the very source of His essence, such that He has knowledge of them together with all of the forms within them as individual entities and not through some additional form: [His] knowledge of these is the very thing that they are. Not even the weight of an atom escapes Him in the heavens or in the earth [Q. 34:3]. Thus if mafātiḥ is [taken as] the plural of maftaḥ, which is a 'store' (makhzan), then it means that with Him are those storehouses that subsume all of the unseens, by virtue of His essence being present therein; none but He knows them. If it is [taken as] the plural of miftaḥ, in the sens of 'key' (miftāḥ), then either it has that very meaning [of 'keys'], in other words, that its doors are closed and the keys are in His hand such that no one accesses them, or [it has the meaning] that the causes of its [the unseen's] manifestation and its being brought out from its place to the world of witness such that creatures are able to know it lies in His power and His disposal, preserved with Him, none other than Him is able to extract it from Him in order to know what it contains, being His Names, exalted be He; as for the 'clear book', this is the heaven of this world by virtue of these particulars being entified therein despite their number and individuations.

Then He raises you up therein, that is, in the sound deeds that you have committed and [in] what you have earned, for recompense, so that a term, which He has specified for resurrection and revivification, may be accomplished, whereafter you shall be returned to your Lord at the source of the nondelimited union so that He might inform you [of what you used to do] by making manifest upon you the forms of your deeds and recompense you therewith.