of the cosmos. If others were able to gratify and place under their obligation those conscious beings in such fashion as to make them turn away from and forget their true object of worship —Who may, indeed, be swiftly forgotten, because of his invisibility— this would be in such utter contradiction to the essence of Divinty and its sacred purposes that it could in no way be allowed. It is for this reason that the Qur’an so repeatedly and with such vehemence refutes polytheism and threatens the polytheists with Hell-fire.

THE SECOND TRUTH: Absolute Dominicality

The ubiquitous workings of a wise and compassionate hidden hand throughout the cosmos, especially in animate beings and their nurturing and development, everywhere in the same fashion and yet in a totally unexpected form, must be, without doubt, the emanation and light of an absolute dominicality and a decisive proof of its reality.

An absolute dominicality cannot accept any partnership for since the important aims and purposes of dominicality, such as the manifestation of its beauty, the proclamation of its perfection, the revelation of its precious arts and the display of its hidden accomplishments, are combined and concentrated in particulars and animate beings, the slightest attribution to God of a partner, when entering even the most particular of things and the smallest of animate beings, will frustrate the attainment of those purposes and destroy those aims. Averting the faces of conscious beings from those purposes and the One Who conceived them toward causes will be totally opposed and hostile to the essence of dominicality, and absolute dominicality cannot in any way countenance it.

The abundant proclamations in the Qur’an of God’s sanctity and transcendence, its verses and words, even its letters and their shapes, are constant guides to God’s unity, made necessary by the mystery we have just expounded.

THE THIRD TRUTH: Perfections

The self-evident testimony to the existence of the truth of perfections given by all the exalted instances of wisdom in the universe, all its wondrous beauties, its just laws, its wise purposes, and in particular its testimony to the perfections of the Creator, Who brought forth the cosmos out of the void and then administered it in