Nevertheless...

Nevertheless, just to present a sample, I will refer to one of them, which is somewhat easier to understand: Despite all the āyah s which have been revealed in respect of meeting Allah and knowing Him, all the narratives that were related to the same subject and all the indications and allusions, open and hidden, in the invocations and the supplications of the Imāms (' a ), some uninformed and vulgar persons have spread the belief that the way to knowing Allah was completely closed.

The door of knowing Allah and discerning the Beauty [of Him] is interpreted to be the same as meditating upon the very Essence of Allah, which is prohibited, or rather impossible. They may even refrain from entering this field and prefer not to acquaint themselves with such knowledge, which is the delight of the eyes of the prophets and holy men [ awliyā' ].

It is much to be regretted by the people of Allah to see a chapter of knowledge, which can very aptly be described as the goal of sending the prophets and the most cherished demand of the holy men, should be so prohibited to the people that a simple mentioning it would be regarded complete disbelief and mere heresy.

These people take the knowledge [ ma'ārif ] of the prophets and the holy men [ awliyā' ] to be the same as the knowledge [ ma'ārif ] of the common people and [unlettered old] women about Allah's Essence, Names and Attributes. Sometimes they say even more than that: “So-and-so has good, vulgar beliefs.

We wish we kept to the same vulgar belief.” This is quite correct, because when this wretched person utters these words, he has already lost his vulgar beliefs, and, at the same time, regards other beliefs, which are the beliefs of the elite and the people of Allah, to be false.

This wish is quite similar to the wish of the disbelievers who, as in the noble āyah , say: “ …and the disbeliever shall say: O would that I were dust!” [^4] Should we want to relate in detail the āyah s and the narratives concerning the meeting with Allah, in order to expose this corrupt belief caused by ignorance and Satanic conceit, we would need to write a separate book.

Especially, if we wanted to explain the knowledge which has been neglected due to this thick satanic veil, it would be clear that this negligence is one of the stages of neglecting and discarding the Qur'an, and it is probably the most regretful stage, as is described in the Qur'an: “ And the Messenger said: O my Lord!