it accorded with what the religious law prescribed or not. The perfected knower is one who sees every object of worship as a locus of manifestation of the Real, who is worshipped therein. Thus, they all call it a god alongside its particular name: tree, stone, animal, human being, star, or angel. This name identifies its particular identity. Divinity is a rank that leads the worshipper to imagine that it belongs to his object of worship. In reality, it is a locus of manifestation of the Real to the sight of this worshipper, who remains devoted to this object of worship in this locus of manifestation particular to a stone.

For this reason, some who did not understand the import of their own words said in ignorance:

“We only worship them to bring us nearer to Allah.”

Yet they called them gods, as when they said:

“Has he made the gods one God? Indeed, this is an astonishing thing!”

They did not deny Him, but were astonished at this, for they remained attached to the multiplicity of forms and the attribution of divinity to them. The Messenger came and called them to a single God, known but not witnessed—as their own testimony showed that they acknowledged Him and believed in Him when they said:

“We only worship them to bring us nearer to Allah.”

For they knew that those forms were stones. Thus, the proof against them was established by His saying:

“Say, ‘Name them.’”

They could name them only by names they knew truly applied to them, such as stone, wood, star, and the like.

As for those who know the matter as it truly is, they outwardly disavow the forms that are worshipped. Their rank in knowledge requires them to submit to the rule of the time, because they are subject to the authority of the Messenger in whom they believe and through whom they are called believers. They are therefore worshippers of the time, despite knowing that they had not worshipped those forms themselves, but had worshipped Allah in them, under the sovereign power of self-manifestation