[4:125-4:126] And who is fairer in religion than he who submits his purpose to God and is virtuous, and who follows the creed of Abraham as a ḥanīf? And God took Abraham for a close friend. * To God belongs all that is in the heavens and in the earth; and God is ever the Encompasser of all things.
There is no one fairer in religion than he who submits his purpose to God. It means he has made seeking God his sole objective and purified his tie with God from what is other than God. Then he submits himself in all of his states to God through God and does not hold back anything from God in his wealth, his body, his spirit, his strength, his family, and his children, This was the state of Abraham (ʿa).
And is virtuous (muḥsin): Being virtuous (iḥsān), as attested to in the law, is to worship God as if you see Him. A remnant from the eye of separation must remain for the servant so that his performance of His rights (s) will be sound because if he were to be completely taken up in the real, his submitting and virtuousness would not be sound. This is following Abraham (ʿa) the ḥanīf. Nothing remained of him which could be described as perpetual.
And God took Abraham for a close friend: He stripped the event from every effort, labor, seeking, and striving when He said this, so that it would be known that friendship is a clothing the Real puts on one, not an attribute the servant acquires.
It is said the friend is entirely in need of the Real at every breath. There is nothing from it for him that is not through God and for God in every one of his breaths and states, a longing from the friendship which is privation and need.
It is said it is from that friendship which is love and the friendship that love reaches every part of him and permeates his innermost self until there is no possibility in it for any other.
When God (s) purified him (ʿa) of it, and emptied from him his portion for the performance of His right after his erasure from everything that is not God (s).
Then He said: And announce among the people the [season for] Pilgrimage [22:27]. The pilgrim does not say 'labayyka' except to God and this is an allusion to the gathering of the gathering (jamʿ al-jamʿ).