offering them affection.” According to their claim, Allah has no enemy at all, and there is nothing other than Him or besides Him whereby He could conceivably be an enemy to Himself or to the entities through which alone He manifests.

Sixth:

They hold that calling people to Allah is a deception practised upon them, as he expressly stated: “Calling someone to Allah is a deception practised upon that person, for there was no absence at the beginning to warrant a call to the ultimate goal.”

The author of al-Fusūs also said:

“‘And give good tidings to the humble’—those whose natural fire has died down, so that they said ‘a god’ rather than ‘nature.’

“‘And they have led many astray’—that is, they bewildered them by making the One multiple through aspects and relations. ‘And do not increase the wrongdoers’—those who wrong themselves, the chosen ones who were made to inherit the Book. They are the first of the three groups, and He placed them before those who take a middle course and those who are foremost. ‘Except in error’—that is, except in bewilderment. And in the Muhammadan context: ‘Increase me in bewilderment concerning You.’

“‘Whenever it lights up for them, they walk in it; and when darkness falls upon them, they stand still’—for Him. Thus, for the one who causes bewilderment, there is rotation and circular movement around the pole, from which he never departs. The one who follows an extended path deviates and moves away from the intended goal, seeking what he is already within. He pursues an imagined object towards which his journey is directed. He therefore has a ‘from,’ a ‘to,’ and what lies between them. But the one whose movement is circular has no beginning that would bind him to ‘from,’ nor an endpoint that would subject him to ‘to.’ His existence is therefore the most complete, and he is the one endowed with concise, comprehensive speech.” End quote.