‘They have not appraised Allah with true appraisal.’

‘And my parents’—meaning those from whom I originated, namely intellect and nature. ‘And whoever enters my house’—meaning my heart—‘as a believer,’ accepting the divine tidings it contains, which are what the souls have told themselves. ‘And the believing men’—from among the intellects—‘and the believing women’—from among the souls. ‘And do not increase the wrongdoers’—the word being taken from ‘darkness’: the people of the unseen, sheltered within dark veils—‘except in destruction,’ meaning annihilation, so that they no longer know their own souls, because they behold the face of the True One to the exclusion of themselves.”

All of this is among the most abominable alterations and distortions of Allah’s words. Allah condemned the People of the Book in the Quran for things less grave than this. He condemned them for distorting words from their proper places, and because they:

“Write the Scripture with their own hands, then say, ‘This is from Allah,’ in order to exchange it for a small price.”

“They say, ‘It is from Allah,’ but it is not from Allah. And they speak untruth about Allah while they know.”

These people have distorted Allah’s words from their proper places in the most abominable manner. They have written books of hypocrisy and heresy with their own hands and claimed that they are from Allah. Sometimes they claim to receive from the same source as the angel who conveys revelation to the Prophet, thus placing themselves one degree above the Prophet. At other times, they claim to receive from the same source as Allah, so that one of them, in his knowledge of himself, stands on a par with Allah’s knowledge of him, because both draw from one and the same source. At still other times, one of them claims that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, gave him, in a dream, this hypocrisy