designations—the praised, the censured, and the neglected—in order to make them walls and ramparts over the treasures of secrets. They have gates; "the inward thereof contains mercy, and the outward thereof is toward the punishment". The proof of this is the praising of everything and the censuring of it with one [and the same] name, without change or substitution for that name. For if the Exalted had intended the outward worldly name, such as gold and silver, or any metal called by the name of the sun and the moon, or any planet or star, or other such designations mentioned in the Heavenly Books [He would have specified so].

And whoever ponders the words of the Exalted finds that He praises the name in one place and censures it in another. This indicates that His intent by the praised [subject] is the praised person, just as His intent by the censured [subject] is the censured person. This is a divine wisdom and a Lordly mercy, to guide thereby the believers who acknowledge His inward secrets, and to veil thereby the disbelievers—those who persist in rejection and denial—from perceiving the reality of the essence of the inward secrets, according to the saying of the Exalted: "{And whoever is blind in this [world] will be blind in the Hereafter and more astray in way}" (Al-Isra: 72).

What confirms the obligation of concealing secrets from the people of denial is what the revealed Books have brought of these names that indicate persons and inward knowledges (Ma'arif). If Allah had willed to