the calf worshipped by the calf-worshippers, as their leader—the leader of misguidance, the author of Fusūs—said in the chapter on Noah:

“‘They devised a tremendous scheme,’ for calling someone to Allah Most High is to deceive the person being called: He was not absent at the beginning that one should be called to Him as the goal. ‘I call to Allah’—this is deception itself—‘with insight.’ He thus indicated that the entire affair belongs to Him. They therefore answered him with deception, just as he had called them. Then came the Muhammadan, who knew that the call to Allah does not concern His very identity, but rather His names. Thus he said:

‘On the Day We gather the God-fearing to the Most Merciful as an honoured delegation’ (85) [Mary 85].

He used the preposition indicating a destination and coupled it with the name. We thus learned that the world was encompassed by a divine name that obliged its inhabitants to be God-fearing. In their scheming, they said:

‘And never abandon Wadd, nor Suwāʿ, nor Yaghūth, Yaʿūq, and Nasr’ (23) [Noah 23].

For if they abandoned them, their ignorance of the Real would be proportionate to what they abandoned of these objects of worship. For the Real has an aspect in every object of worship, which some Muhammadans recognize and others do not.

‘Your Lord has decreed that you worship none but Him’ [al-Isrāʾ 23].

That is, He decreed this for the world. Thus, the one who knows understands who was worshipped, and in what form He appeared so as to be worshipped, and that