And his statement:

“‘Call to Allah’ is deception itself. They therefore answered him with deception, just as he called them with deception.”

Thus they said in their deception:

“Do not abandon your gods; do not abandon Wadd, Suwāʿ, Yaghūth, Yaʿūq, or Nasr.” [Nūh: 23]

For if they abandoned these, their ignorance of the Real would be proportionate to their abandonment of them. For in every object of worship there is an aspect of the Real, known to some and unknown to others, as He said concerning the followers of Muhammad:

“And your Lord has decreed that you worship none but Him.” [al-Isrāʾ: 23]

That is, Allah has ruled. He interpreted “decreed” to mean “predestined,” not “commanded.” He said:

“Whatever Allah rules must come to pass.”

“The gnostic knows who has been worshipped, in what form He appeared and came to be worshipped, and that differentiation and multiplicity are like the limbs in a perceptible form and the immaterial faculties in a spiritual form. Thus, none but Allah has been worshipped in any object of worship.”