Yet it is evident that every being that exists outside the mind is a specific, concrete entity. Therefore, if He were to know only universals, He would know nothing of these particular existents—not the celestial spheres, not the angels, nor any other being in its own distinct reality.

In their view, duʿāʾ (supplication) is simply the powerful soul’s act of impressing its form upon the prime matter of the cosmos, exactly as Ibn Sīnā and those like him have stated. They further claim that al-Lawḥ al-Maḥfūẓ (the Preserved Tablet) is identical with al-nafs al-falakiyya (the celestial soul), and that every earthly occurrence arises solely from the motion of the heavenly sphere—an assertion that has been refuted in detail elsewhere.

The point here is that the idolaters never affirmed, alongside Allah, any other deity equal to Him in attributes and actions. Indeed, they never said that the stars, the sun, or the moon created the universe, nor that the idols create anything within it.

Whoever imagines that the people of Abraham the Friend believed the star, the sun, or the moon to be the Lord of the worlds, or that when Abraham—peace be upon him—said, “This is my Lord,” he actually meant the Lord of the worlds, has fallen into manifest error. Abraham’s people acknowledged the Maker; they merely associated others with Him in worship, as did their fellow polytheists.