His is the call of truth: in other words, the truthful call that is not made in falsehood belongs to Him and not to anyone other than Him. He calls on Himself and He responds, as He says [elsewhere] Surely to God belongs pure religion [Q. 39:3], which is to say that pure religion is His religion only, which means that the truthful call that deserves to be answered is the call of the affirmer of the Oneness, the one who is annihilated from his soul and subsists through his Lord; likewise is pure religion, His religion. Callers who subsist by their own souls only call upon what they have conceptualised and sculpted in their imagination and so their call is not answered, except in so far as an inanimate thing responds when something is requested from it. By my life, only an affirmer of the Oneness calls upon God, whereas another calls upon the other, an illusory thing that has no power or existence and hence no response. Such [a caller] is one who has veiled his preparedness by the attributes of his soul and thus is not aware of what it [his preparedness] deserved and so his call is lost, and such a call can only be doomed [to failure]. Or [it is that] the call of truth, Majestic and Exalted, can only be for Him; or that the call of the one called, who is the Truth, is the call specific to His Essence, not made to any of His names or attributes. The describers (wāṣifūn) who call upon His names and attributes as opposed to His essence do not receive an answer from the thing that they have called upon except as the answer received by the one who calls upon water by gesturing [to it], [and that is] because they are veiled; and the call of, those who are veiled, [goes only] astray, lost.
