— encompasses the servant’s very creation and point of departure, for He nurtures him and assumes full charge of his affairs. Yet this second Name is folded into the first just as rubūbiyyah (lordship) is folded into ulūhiyyah (divinity); and lordship, in turn, necessarily entails divinity. The Name al-Rahmān (the All-Merciful) unites the perfection of both relations, and by embodying these two conditions it brings the servant’s felicity in this world and the next to completion.

For that reason the Exalted says: “Yet they deny the All-Merciful. Say: He is my Lord; there is no deity but He. Upon Him I rely, and to Him I return in repentance” (Q 13:30). Here the three Names—al-Rahmān, my Lord, and the deity—are brought together. He then says, “Upon Him I rely, and to Him I return,” just as the same three Names appear in the Mother of the Qur’an, although there the order begins with the Name Allah. Accordingly, the surah opens with “It is You we worship,” placing the Name and the worship attached to it first, for that surah is the Opening of the Book and the Mother of the Qur’an. It therefore leads with the intended objective, which is the final cause, because it serves as the efficient cause that brings about the final cause. I have discussed this point at length elsewhere—at the beginning of my Tafsīr and in the treatise “The Principle of Love and Will.”