and acknowledgment in the Hereafter through unveiling, as when the progeny were grasped? Their punishment and chastisement are purification and cleansing, like believers’ illnesses and their trials in this world through suffering afflictions and calamities, despite faith.
Then some perpetrators of major sins enter the Fire despite their faith and affirmation of oneness, until brought out through intercession. Then the Real brings from the Fire those who never did any good. Even those remaining in Gehenna have within it a state they find sweet: through it chastisement, ʿadhāb, is named.
The intimate friend follows his intimate friend’s custom. This is his saying, may God bless him and grant him peace, “A person follows his intimate friend’s religion,” meaning his custom. Imruʾ al-Qays said:
Like your custom with Umm al-Huwayrith before her, and her neighbor Umm al-Rabab at Maʾsal.
He means, “Like your custom.” Whoever’s custom toward God’s creatures is what God habituates them to—His subtle favors, abundant blessings showered upon them, and making them affectionate toward one another—so that no anger appears in the world without mercy mingling with it, nor enmity without affection permeating it, deserves the name intimate friendship through fulfilling its right and all its conditions.
Were there nothing to support great hope in mercy’s encompassing reach except “The All-Merciful established Himself upon the Throne” [Ta Ha 20:5], it would suffice. Once mercy is established in the Throne encompassing all the world’s bodies, everything among the names or attributes opposing it or seeking to remove it is incidental, with no root in permanence. The ruling belongs to the One who prevails,
Notlar
Translator’s note TN4785-1: The author links ʿadhāb, chastisement, with finding sweetness, from the ʿ-dh-b root. The claim about those remaining in Gehenna is retained as his interpretation. The Imruʾ al-Qays line supports his explicit dīn/custom reading without changing the earlier report’s first rendering.
