Say: 'I have been commanded to be the first to submit: He says this even as He says Then We revealed to you [saying]: 'Follow the creed of Abraham, a ḥanīf, and he was not of the idolaters' [Q. 16:123], and likewise where Moses says 'Glory be to You! I repent to You and I am the first of the believers' [Q. 7:143], because the levels of spirits differ in proximity to and distance from the divine ipseity; and every individual who is more distant, his faith is effected through the medium of the one who is ahead of him in level. The people of the unity are all at the divine level, the people of the foremost rank, whose faith is without mediation, whereas the faith of all others is through the mediation of these [foremost] ones, for each who is ahead [from among the former there is the mediation of] one who is ahead [from among the foremost rank]. Every individual whose faith involves no mediation becomes 'the first of the believers', even if his existence comes later in terms of time, as the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, said: 'We are the later one and those who are the first'. Thus his following of the creed of Abraham does not detract of his [Muḥammad's] precedence, because the meaning of 'following' is to journey along the path of the affirmation of Oneness as in his journeying in the first epoch, and the meaning of his being of the first is his being among the foremost rank with those who have preceded.