[O you who believe] do not take as intimates anyone apart from yourselves: a person's intimate is his closest and most faithful friend, the one who keeps him hidden and is privy to his secrets. Such a friend cannot exist unless the two are united in their purpose, are in accord on religion and in attribute, loving one another for God's sake and not for some [other] purpose, as is said of friends [that they are] one soul in separate bodies. And if he happens not to be a believer, then it is far more likely that he will be secretly an enemy. He then makes clear his hypocrisy and secret enmity with His words: such men spare nothing to ruin you … to the end [of the verse]. For true and pure love can only be between believers in [God's] Oneness, since it is the shadow of [the very] Oneness: it cannot be between those who are veiled as they inhabit the world of contrareity and darkness. Where in this world of theirs is there purity and harmony? Nay, it may be that the all-inclusive human genus brings them close together, sharing as they do in that species, and [in] benefits and delights, and in their need for cooperation therein. But once what they have sought of benefits and delights is not actualised, they quarrel and fall into mutual hatred. And that [initial] closeness between them dissipates, since it had been the result of something that undergoes change, because the soul is the origination point of change. This-worldly benefits do not remain in the same state, while egocentric pleasures are fleeting; therefore love based upon it does not endure, unlike the former [type of] love, since this [latter] is based on something that by its essence never changes. That [kind of enmity] ensues when it is a matter between them: how [much worse] would it be when the matter is between them and those who oppose them in principle and in attribute. How can light and darkness be of the same nature and how can the sublime and the low be compatible? Thus between those [aforementioned] men there exists real enmity and essential disagreement, the effects of which cannot be hidden, as God makes clear in His words: Hatred is [even] revealed by their mouths, because the description of [a person's] essence cannot be concealed. The Prophet said: 'Never does a person hide something except that God makes it manifest in slips of the tongue and the expressions of the face; and what their breasts conceal is yet greater, because it is a fire and this is the spark: that is the source and this is its offshoot. Now We have made clear to you the signs, the proofs of love and enmity and its causes, if you understand, the import of these words.