A declaration of immunity from God and His Messenger, [to the end of] the verse: when the Messenger was not able to sustain [his] uprightness because of the place of his variegation at times through the manifestation of his attributes and at other times because of the existence of remnants, as indicated by the QurÌān in those instances of [the Prophet receiving] rebuke and being made firm, such as [in] His saying he frowned and turned away [Q. 80:1]; and His saying And if We had not made you [stand] firm, certainly you might have inclined to them a little [Q. 17:74]; [and His saying] May God pardon you! Why do you give them leave…ḍ [Q. 9:43]; It is not for any prophet to have prisoners [Q. 8:67]; and when his [the Prophet's] companions from among the believers had not yet arrived at the station of the unity of the Essence, at times because of their veiling themselves with [their] acts and at other times with [their] attributes, there then was between them and the idolaters a correspondence, propinquity in terms of genus and a treaty, and thus by virtue of that genus-correspondence they made a covenant with them given that there was [this] connection between them. But when the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, and the believers then obey His words, exalted be He, So be upright, as you have been commanded and those who repent with you [Q. 11:112], and when he had attained the utmost in fixity and the veils of the acts, thoe of the attributes and those of the essence had been removed from the faces of the wayfarers among his companions until they were able to reach the station of the unity of the Essence, that correspondence between them and the idolaters was [also] removed, and there no longer remained any sort of correspondence between them. Thereupon contrareity and opposition was realised [between them] and separation and enmity became justified and so was revealed: A declaration of immunity from God and His Messenger [Q. 9:1] to the idolaters with whom you made a pact: in other words, this state, the state of total separation and enmity between us and the declaration of true immunity from God, from the point of view of the union, and [from] His Messenger from the point of view of the differentiation given to him. Thus they declared themselves quit of them outwardly just as they were quit of them inwardly and they cast off their covenant [with them] formally just as they cast off the covenant with them in reality.
