Worship God, and associate nothing with Him, and act beautifully toward parents, and toward kinsfolk, orphans, the indigent, and the neighbor who is of kin, and the neighbor who is a stranger, and the companion at your side, and the son of the road, and what your right hands own. This verse begins by mentioning tawḤīd, which is the root of the sciences, the secret of the recogni- tions, the basis of the religion, the foundation of being a Muslim, and the partition between enemy and friend. Any act of obedience without tawḤīd has no value or weight, and its outcome will be nothing but darkness and captivity. Any act of disobedience along with tawḤīd will yield nothing other than familiarity and brightness. TawḤīd is that you say that God is one and that you be one for Him. Saying one is the submit- ter's tawḤīd, and being one is the basis of the recognizer's tawḤīd. The submitter's tawḤīd drives away the devil, washes away sin, and opens up the heart. The recognizer's tawḤīd cuts away at- tachments, washes away the creatures, and brings forth the realities. The submitter's tawḤīd takes advice, opens the door, and gives fruit. The recognizer's tawḤīd effaces the customs of human nature and burns away the veil of mortal nature so that the breeze of familiarity may blow, the beginningless reminder may arrive, and the friend may gaze upon the Friend. The submitter's tawḤīd is that you bear witness to God's one Essence, pure attributes, and beginningless names and marks. He is the God other than whom there is no god, the Creator of heaven and earth other than whom there is no enactor. No one has loyalty like Him in the whole cosmos. He is a Lord who is above all in measure, beyond all in Essence and attributes. From the Beginningless to the Endless He is the greatest Lord. When intellect holds that something is impossible, God has perfect power over it. His power makes no use of contrivance, and His self- standing has no change of state. In the kingdom He is safe from disappearance, and in Essence and attributes He is transcendent. You will never see any created thing without marks of deficiency and fault, but the Eternal Enactor is pure of deficiency, incomparable with fault, free of blights.
