the moon and the stars at sunrise, or its sinking in the west. For when the sun rises, the stars are said to have disappeared and become hidden, even though they remain in the sky: the sun’s light has simply effaced their radiance. This resolves the difficulty raised concerning the verse’s account of the sun rising after the moon had set.

Abraham, peace be upon him, did not say:

“I do not love those that set,”

when he saw the star, the moon, and the sun moving. Rather, he said this only when the celestial body disappeared and became hidden. If Abraham intended, as they claim, to argue from its setting that the setting body could not be the Lord of all worlds, then Abraham’s account would be evidence against them. For he did not take its rising and its movement through the sky until its disappearance as evidence against its being the Lord of all worlds; rather, he took only its disappearance as evidence. Thus, if their claim about his intended argument were correct, it would establish the opposite of what they seek to prove and invalidate the claim that motion is evidence of having come into existence.

The truth, however, is that Abraham did not intend this. Nor, when he said:

“This is my Lord,”

did he mean that it was the Lord of all worlds. No descendant of Adam has ever believed that any star created the heavens and the earth, nor that the sun or moon did so. Neither did the polytheists among Abraham’s people believe this. Rather, they associated partners with Allah, worshipping the stars, invoking them, building temples for them, and worshipping their idols in those temples. This was the religion of the Chaldeans, the Kashdānians, and the polytheistic Sabians—not the Sabians who adhered to pure monotheism. It was according to the religion of those polytheists that the author of The Hidden Secret of Magic and Addressing the Stars composed his book.