In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Most Merciful.
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Since modesty is an attribute related to faith and belongs to faith’s very essence, its effect appears in the human being’s outward form upon the face. A thing’s face is its essence, entity, and reality.
Modesty is divided as faith is divided, into seventy-odd branches. The highest is “There is no god but God,” and the lowest is removing harm from the road.
The correspondence between the highest and lowest is that associating partners is harm upon the path of affirming oneness. Rational proofs and revealed reports remove it, because misleading ambiguities and satanic desires placed it upon that path.
(Modesty in the Profession of Oneness)
The form of modesty overtaking the affirmer of oneness in his affirmation, and the one removing harm from creation’s path, is his uttering the negation of deity before reaching its affirmation for the One entitled to it: his saying, “There is no god.” Negation is nonexistence. Modesty arises in the believing servant because he began with nonexistence, his own entity, for the originated being is described by a state of nonexistence preceding it. Then he acquires existence, which occupies the position of affirmation for what negation had touched.
The originated being can say only this, because nonexistence is not valid after existence, nor negation after affirmation. Had the Real disclosed Himself to him initially, he would not have negated Him
