between the Lord and anyone else—indeed, who regarded Iblīs and all other existing beings as Allah—to be the best and most knowledgeable among them.

For this reason, Ibn ʿArabī disparaged Noah, the first messenger sent to the people of the earth. Allah made his descendants the sole survivors, saved him and those with him in the Ark, and destroyed all the other inhabitants of the earth when they rejected him. He remained among his people for a thousand years less fifty. Yet Ibn ʿArabī exalted Noah’s disbelieving people, who worshipped idols, claiming that they had worshipped none but Allah and that their sins had carried them onward, so that they drowned in seas of knowledge of Allah. This is his habitual practice: he disparages the prophets and praises the disbelievers, as he did in his accounts of Noah, Abraham, Moses, Aaron, and others. He praised the worshippers of the calf, disparaged Aaron, and falsely attributed statements to Moses.

He said:

“Moses understood the matter better than Aaron, for he knew what the worshippers of the calf had worshipped, knowing that Allah had decreed that none but He should be worshipped, and that whatever Allah decrees must occur. Thus, when this happened, Moses reproached his brother Aaron for condemning it and being unable to accommodate it. For the gnostic is one who sees the Real in everything—indeed, sees Him as identical with everything.”

He thus claimed that Moses reproached Aaron for condemning their worship of the calf, and that Aaron condemned it because he could not accommodate it; for the gnostic is one who sees the Real in everything—indeed, sees Him as identical with everything.