Truly Abraham was a community: it has already been mentioned how each prophet sent to a people with a perfection that subsumes all of the perfections of that community and [with] such an extent that his community cannot attain a level except that is below his. Thus he constitutes the sum-total of the perfections of his people and it is only through him that a perfection such as good or happiness reaches them. Nay, their very existences are effused from his existence and so he by himself constitutes a community since in reality they come together in his essence, which is why he [the Prophet], blessings and peace be upon him, said: 'If I were to be weighed against my community, I would outweigh them'; [devotionally] obedient, to God, yielding and compliant before Him in such a way that not a single hair of his moves except by His command, as the warrant of the affirmation of [His] Oneness holds sway over him, his attributes having been effaced by His attributes and hi being united with His Essence. That is why he [Abraham] was called 'God's Intimate Friend', because the Truth has befriended him in his presential vision; thus His friendship [of Abraham] represents an admixture of a remnant of his essence that verges on a duality. Do you not see how the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, when there no longer remained any remnant of him, was called the Beloved of God. Thus the effacement of his attributes in the attributes of the Truth totally and the subsisting of a vestige of his essence but not his entity constitutes his [devotional] obedience (qunūt) to God, else he would have been obedient through God and not to God, as He said to Muḥammad, blessings and peace be upon him: and your patience is only by [the help of] God [Q. 16:127]; a ḥanīf, who inclines away from every falsehood, even from his own existence and the existence of anything that is other than Him, exalted be He, and refuses to affirm that [thing]; and he was not of the idolaters, by attributing existence and effect to another;