has put Me in charge. Whoever puts Me in charge may call Me to account, and I must render the account concerning what he has put Me in charge of.” The affair is thus reversed and the ranks exchanged. This is God’s dealing with His servants whom He has approved and chosen. Beyond this gracious bestowal there is no gracious bestowal to which aspiration can rise in seeking.
This rank does not take the realized servant beyond knowledge of his own measure. None takes God as trustee except one whose faculties and limbs are the Real, for realities cannot change. The servant is a servant, the Lord a Lord, the Real the Real, and creation creation.
If a breaking of customary order appears upon such a person, it is not a charismatic gift in our view, for a charismatic gift accrues to the one upon whom it appears.
(Manifesting a Sign in Support of Messengership)
What happens to someone whose station this is resembles what happened to us at a gathering we attended in the year five hundred and eighty-six. Present with us was a philosopher who denied prophethood as Muslims affirm it and denied what the prophets brought by way of breaking customary orders, [holding] that realities do not change.
It was the cold season, in winter, and before us was a large brazier blazing with fire. The denying disbeliever said, “The common people say that Abraham, peace be upon him, was cast into fire and it did not burn him, although fire by its nature burns bodies capable of being burned.
“The fire mentioned in the Qurʾan in the story of Abraham the intimate friend was merely an expression for Nimrod’s anger and rage against him. It is the fire of anger,
Notes
Translator’s note TN4815-1: The supplied conjunction before ‘that realities do not change’ leaves the shift from what the philosopher denies to the premise he maintains implicit. ‘[Holding]’ makes that contextual reading visible.
