to be upheld by groups of polytheists to this day. It is the subject on which al-Rāzī wrote al-Sirr al-Maktūm (The Hidden Secret) and other works.

If the disputants say, “Rather, Allah’s intimate friend meant that this was the Lord of all worlds,” the reply is:

Then his acknowledgment would be evidence that your position is false. For he would, in that case, be acknowledging that the Lord of all worlds could occupy space, move from one place to another, and undergo change. He did not regard these occurrences as incompatible with His existence; rather, what he regarded as incompatible with it was His setting—that is, His disappearance from view. Thus, the account of Allah’s intimate friend is more readily evidence against them than evidence in their favour. They have no argument in it whatsoever.

Even more unsound is the claim of someone who interprets setting as contingency and regards everything besides Allah as setting, in the sense of being eternal and beginningless. He thus holds that the heavens, the earth, the mountains, the sun, the moon, and the stars have always been, and will always remain, in a state of setting, and that their setting is an inseparable attribute of them, since it means their being contingent, and contingency is inseparable from them.

Not only is this an obvious falsification of the language and the Quran, evident to everyone—like his other falsifications, such as calling that which is eternal and beginningless something that has come into being, or something made—but the account of Allah’s intimate friend is also evidence against him. For when he saw the moon rising, he said, “This is my Lord,” and when he saw the sun rising, he said, “This is my Lord.” Then, when it set, he said:

“I do not love those that set.”

This makes clear that it set after previously not setting. By contrast, the contingency of the sun, the moon, the stars, and everything besides Allah is an inseparable attribute: it does not arise after previously being absent.