[a servant] upright, that is, He made him upright as he was commanded in His words: so remain upright as you have been commanded [Q. 11:112]. The meaning [of this] is that He made him an affirmer of the Oneness, annihilated in Him, not veiled in his presential vision by the other, nor by his own soul - since this too constitutes a contingent other, but upright in the state of subsistence, as He has said: Truly those who say, 'Our Lord is God!' and then remain upright [Q. 41:30]. Or [it means] that He has made him the sustainer (qayyim) of the affairs of [His] servants and of their guidance, since perfection is contingent upon perfectedness, for he [the Prophet], blessings and peace be upon him, having finished making his soul upright (taqwīm) and cleansing it, the souls of his community were assigned the station (maqām) of his soul and so he was commanded to make these upright and to cleanse them. It is for the same signification that Abraham, may God's blessings be upon him, was called 'a community [unto himself]' [cf. Q. 16:120]. This capacity to make [others] upright, that is, to sustain the guidance of people is subsumed by the very uprightness to which he has been commanded in reality, to warn: this [verb] is connected to the [grammatical] operator (ʿāmil) of qayyiman ('upright'): in other words, He has charged him with the [making upright of the] affairs of servants in order that he should warn, of severe distress: the omission of the first direct object is intended to express generality because no one, neither believer nor unbeliever, is exempt from distress, as God, exalted be He, has said: 'Warn the sincere righteous that I am a jealous One and give good tidings to sinners that I am Forgiving'. For distress represents His vanquishing, which is why He has aggrandised it by the use of the indefinite [form] - in other words, [warn them of] a distress that befits His tremendousness and His might - [and why] He has qualified this [distress] with [the term] 'severe' and specified it by saying that it is: from Him. Vanquishing is of two kinds. One kind is pure vanquishing, outer and inner vanquishing, such as the one that specifically afflicts those who are veiled by idolatrous association. Another kind is vanquishing in its outer [manifest] aspect but graciousness in its inner [hidden] aspect. Such is [divine] graciousness, as the Commander of the Believers, ʿAlī [b. Abī Ṭālib], peace be upon him, said: 'Glory be to Him whose disfavour towards His enemies is severe just as His grace is all-embracing and whose mercy towards His friends is all-embracing just as His disfavour remains severe'. An example of the latter type is the vanquishing that is specific to the affirmers of Oneness from among the people of annihilation. He has given the warning to all in a nondelimited way in order to alert [all], but then differentiated between grace and vanquishing by making them dependent on attributes and merit, hence He says: and to bring good tidings to the believers, that is, the affirmers of Oneness, since they constitute the counterpart to the idolaters who said that God had taken to Himself a son, who perform righteous deeds, that is, the enduring good deeds and virtues because the fair reward pertains to the garden of effects and acts which is merited by deeds. Know also that the warning and the good tidings, both of which belong to the perfection that is concomitant of his [the Prophet's] being watcher (qayyim) over the two [groups], are the effect and result of the two divine attributes of vanquishing and graciousness the locus of preparedness for the reception of which within the soul of a servant are wrath and passionate desire. For the servant only prepares to receive these [divine attributes] by means of the two attributes of [his] wrath and passionate desire and their annihilation, just as he is only prepared for the two virtues of courage and self-restraint when those attributes are present: when these [wrath and passionate desire] are annihilated, the two [divine attributes] take their place, because each of the two is the shadow of one of those two [divine attributes] and disappears with their actualisation. Thus when the heart has imbibed these two [divine attributes] and the assumption of them as character traits has been perfected there ensues from vanquishing the warning, upon the meriting of the locus as a result of disbelief and idolatry and [there ensues] from graciousness the good tidings, upon the meriting by means of faith and righteous deeds, since effusion only takes place when the locus has acquired the meriting [of it]. [18:5] They do not have, in this any knowledge, nor did their fathers: in other words, they have no knowledge regarding that claim [about God having a son], rather it issues from extreme ignorance and [blind] imitation of their fathers and not from any knowledge or certainty, a fact which is reinforced by His words: Dreadful is the word, in other words, how great [in injustice] is that statement, that comes out of their mouths: in their hearts there can be no such meaning, since it is impossible and has no meaning. For certain knowledge testifies that the sublime necessary existence is unique in essence and cannot be likened to defective contingent existence. A son is the like of his father in terms of species and his equal in terms of strength. But presential vision of the essence stipulates that creation will be annihilated in the Truth and the effect in the Witnessed, whereupon there will be nothing there except Him and no other, let alone [that there should be] a like or a son, as one of them has said:
'In this existence, even if outwardly it as well as your life should be multitudinous outwardly, there is only you'.
They speak nothing but lies, since rational proof and the consciousness of the tasting in the presential vision are both in accord on the impossibility of that.