and Aaron—does it agree with the Quran or contradict it?”

He replied, “No; rather, it contradicts it.” I said, “Then choose for yourself: either the Quran or the words of Ibn Arabī.”

Likewise, he said concerning Noah: “Had Noah combined the two calls for his people, they would have responded to him.” That is, he mentioned his calling them openly and then calling them secretly. He went on to say:

“When they realized that calling to Allah was a ruse played upon those being called—for He was not absent at the beginning, such that they should be called to Him as their destination—‘I call to Allah’ is the very essence of the ruse. ‘With insight’—he thus indicated that the matter belongs entirely to Allah. So they answered him with a ruse, just as he had called them.

“Then the Muhammadan came and knew that the call to Allah concerns not His identity, but His names. Thus He said: ‘On the Day We gather the righteous before the Most Merciful as an honoured delegation.’ He used the preposition indicating a destination and coupled it with the Name. We therefore knew that creation was encompassed by a divine name that required them to be God-fearing.

“So they said as part of their ruse: ‘Do not abandon your gods; do not abandon Wadd, Suwā', Yaghūth, Ya'ūq, or Nasr.’ For, to the extent that they abandoned these, they would be ignorant of the Real. The Real has an aspect in every object of worship, recognized by those who recognize it and unknown to those who do not. As He said concerning the Muhammadans: ‘Your Lord has decreed that you worship none but Him, and that you show kindness to parents’—that is, He has ruled.

“The knower knows whom he has worshipped and in what form He appeared so as to be worshipped. He knows that differentiation and multiplicity are like the limbs within a perceptible form and the immaterial faculties within a spiritual form. Thus, in every object of worship, none other than Allah has been worshipped.”