[And We made it an exemplary punishment for all the former times and for the latter, and an admonition to such as who fear.]
Thus for the Jews was assigned the first day of the week on account of their being the people of the origin and the manifest, and for the Christians the following [day] as they are the people of the final return, the spiritual and the hidden who relative to us come after the origin and the manifest; while for the Muslims [was assigned] the last [day of the week] which is Friday because at the end of time they would be the people of the sealing [final] prophethood and the all-comprehensive universal unity. If Saturday is taken to be the last day, according to what has been transmitted, that it is the seventh [day], then in relation to God the Truth, that is because it constitutes the world of the senses to which was made the call of the Jews, being the last of the worlds; then the world of the intellect to which was made the call of the Christians is the first [of these worlds], while Friday is the day of union and the sealing: whoever does not take into account these conventions and observances in the first place the light of his preparedness disappears and is transfigured in the way that the people of the Sabbath were transfigured because of the interdiction concerning fishing [symbolising], that is, the securing and acquisition of ego-centric shares on the Saturday. They connived regarding it by creating a pool on the seashore in which the fish would be trapped [on the Saturday] and they would fish them out on Sunday. In other words, throughout the days of the week they would store up from the waters of the sea of primordial matter (hayūla) physical mass in the pools of their homes gathering thereby a variety of foods and drinks, pleasures and distractions so that there accumulated for them ego-centric shares on the day of the Sabbath what sufficed them for the remaining days of the week during which they would be free to engage in livelihoods, artisanship and trades, as is the custom of the Jews and certain cunning Muslims to this day in some communities, so that most of their wicked dealings take place therein. That was their practice with regard to the Sabbath and this proves that all of their moments of presence are directed towards the concerns of this world and the pursuit of the shares of the soul and desire. You see this today: a Muslim's physical form may be engaged in prayer in a mosque while his heart is in the middle of a transaction in the marketplace, so much so that some of them say: 'my accounts register is my prayer', in other words, as soon as I am finished with my this-worldly activities [ready] for prayer my heart begins to peruse my transactions, what I owe others and what others owe me. That necessarily results in a sliding down from the upper human world to the nether animal horizon, being the import of His words: and We said to them, 'Be apes, in other words, similar to human beings in form without being [humans] as such, despised!', removed and banished. Transfiguration in fact is undeniably true in this world and in the Hereafter. Several verses and reports mention it, such as His statement, exalted be He: And some of whom He has turned into apes and swine [Q. 5:60]. It has been reported from him [the Prophet] that he said, 'Transfiguration is of 13 kinds …', and proceeded to enumerate them and illustrated their [evil] deeds, their acts of disobedience and the reasons for their transfiguration. In sum, when the characteristic of a given animal predominates in a person and becomes deeply embedded in him so that it erases his preparedness and takes control of his natural disposition and becomes his essential form, like the water that issues from a sulphur spring, his nature becomes the nature of that animal, his soul the soul of that [animal] and so his spirit upon separation [from the body at death] is joined to a body that corresponds to his character whereupon his character becomes his [actual] form, but God knows best.