And who is fairer in religion, that is, in terms of path, than he who submits his purpose, namely, his existence, to God, and purges his essence of the blemishes of egoism and dualism by pure annihilation, and is virtuous, witness of the union at the source of differentiation, mindful of what is due from the self-disclosures of the attributes and the rules governing them, wayfaring along the path of virtuousness by being upright in his deeds, and who follows the creed of Abraham, in terms of the affirmation of [God's] Oneness, as a ḥanīf, inclining away from every act of association in his essence, his attributes and his acts and from every false religion, that is, [from] every path that leads to the affirmation of [the reality of] an act, or attribute or essence, of one other than Him, for his [Abraham's] religion is the religion of truth, by which I mean, that his [a person's spiritual] journeying will in that case be a journeying towards God, not a journeying in God by wayfaring along the path of the attributes, nor [a journeying] towards God by severing the attributes of the soul and the founts of the attributes of the heart. Thus there is no religion better than his [Abraham's] religion. And God took Abraham for an intimate friend (khalīl), in other words, He treats him as an intimate (khālala), that is, He pervades the fissures of his essence and his attributes in such a way that He leaves no remnants thereof, or He seals the fissures and stands in place of what has been annihilated of him when he has been perfected and is in need of Him. The 'intimate' (khalīl) may be a higher level than the 'elect' (ṣafī) but it is lower than the 'lover' (ḥabīb), because the intimate is a lover in whom it may be estimated that there is a remnant of an otherness (ghayriyya), whereas the lover is a beloved in whom no such thing can be conceived of, which is why he [the lover] is cast into the fire of [divine] love and not the other.
