or Manāh,
“an idol”
or al-Ilāhah,
[literally, “the Goddess,” means] “the serpent, or idols, or the crescent moon, or the sun; also pronounced al-Alāhah, al-Ulāhah, al-Ilayhah, al-Alayhah, and al-Ulayhah”
or al-Ṭāghūt,
“the idols al-Lāt and al-ʿUzzā, or a soothsayer, or Satan, or any leader in error, or any idol, or anything that is worshipped to the exclusion of God”
or a zūn,
“any idol or anything that is taken as an object of worship; also a place in which idols are gathered, erected, and adorned”
or a jibt,
“any idol, or a soothsayer or magician, or magic, or anything in which there is no good, or anything that is worshipped to the exclusion of God Almighty”
or by those who worshipped the sun or the moon or Saturn or Jupiter or Venus or Mars or Mercury or Furdūd,398 Pherkad, Edasich, al-Katad, al-ʿAwāʾidh, Hadar, al-Aḥwal, al-Zubrah, al-Aẓhār, Aludra, al-Maʿarrah, al-Aʿyār, al-Nathrah, Gemini, al-Birjīs, al-Tiyāsān, Almeissan, al-Sunnayq, Sheratan, al-Fāriṭān, Alsafi, al-ʿAyyūq, al-ʿAwhaqān, al-Ṣarfah, Alterf, al-Abyaḍ, al-Ḍibāʿ, Heka, Alhena, al-Ridf, al-Maʿlaf, al-Nāqah, Nusakan, al-Simākān, Shuhayl, Shaula, al-ʿAwkalān, al-Mirzamān, al-Sullam, Botein, al-Qadr, al-Ḥayyah, al-Taḥāyā, al-Kharatān, Alchibah, Suhā, al-Shāh, Auva, and Kuwayy?
2.1.17
They would have done better to have reached a consensus and said, “Given that our trade requires, thank God, neither measuring nor counting — unlike that of practitioners of the natural sciences, engineers, and mathematicians, who, whenever asked for proof by an opponent in debate, immediately set about providing it through the use of quantities, areas, and arithmetic, exhausting themselves and their questioners alike — we should pursue a more restful path that will bring us and those with whom we deal closer to the desired end, which is to facilitate the learning of this trade by any who is obliged to practice it. Thereafter, anyone who wishes to wear an outer garment or robe, with drawers underneath or with wrestlers’ breeches, can make them himself of any color he pleases and of any shape he likes, for it makes no sense for one person to raise objections to how another, just like him, may dress or to his taste or to how he sleeps.”
2.1.18
From the day of his first cry till he reaches his fourteenth year, the human lives quite independently of us and without any need for what we plan for him. Instinct guides him to what is appropriate to and good for him. Do you not see how a child, if left to his own devices and nature, will not wear thin linen in winter even if it be embroidered, or furs in the heat of summer even if they be edged with brocade? How, when he feels hunger, he asks for food and, when he gets sleepy, sleeps, even if you seek to distract him with all the music and songs known to man? How, when he gets thirsty, he drinks and, when he gets tired, he rests? In other words, he is in no need of us because of his natural inborn disposition. He could even live, through the strength of the Almighty, for a hundred and twenty years, plus a month, without looking on the face of any one of us or setting eyes on our crowns and gorgeous robes, our signet rings of precious metal, our silvered sticks.
2.1.19
Let us then leave people, unmolested, to their humble pursuits and to their work and not stick our noses into their business or charge them with tasks beyond their ability to perform. If God had wanted to make the child dependent on us, he would have inspired him to ask his parents, from the moment that he started to grow and flourish, their names and station and about the matters over which we wrangle and debate — all the back and forth, the mutual wretchedness and recrimination, the sniping and snippiness, the vilification and reviling, the contradicting and cutting. Better than letting him go down that path, we should concern ourselves with teaching him manners and morality, with refining him and teaching him skills that will help him to earn a living and provide for himself and his parents — such as reading, penmanship, arithmetic, letters, medicine, and painting — and in advising him to exert himself for his own good and that of his parents, his acquaintances, his community, and everyone to whom the term “human” may be applied, without regard for the styles of people’s dress or differences of color or country. The wise and well-guided man sees in others only their common humanity, and any who pays attention to incidental matters such as colors, food, and costume distances himself greatly from what is central to humanity. And all that we do in this regard will be good only if we do it for the sake of God Almighty, not as seekers after rewards or gifts, offerings and donations, but like those many physicians who treat the hard-up for free and whom you’ll see leaving their food and beds and going to a patient with a fever, or leprosy, or the plague, in anticipation of only heavenly reward. All people are God’s children, and the person God loves best is he who is of greatest benefit to His children.
2.1.20
This is what they should have said and is what I say now. Take a Bag-man. He has undertaken to make the circuit of the world’s seas and metropolises, to roam its mountains and wildernesses, to expose himself and his allies to insult and abuse, hostility and hatred, all so that he can tell people that he knows better than they do what they are about. If you ask him for medication for a rheumy eye or an ulcerated leg, a swollen scrotal hernia or a finger that’s bled, or if he’s asked, “What say you to one whose litter has grown while his wealth has flown, whom Fortune has put to the test and whom by his government’s been oppressed, so that he’s afflicted with hunger and condemned to insomnia and now, wherever he walks, people, seeing his podex is bare, refuse to acknowledge that he’s there, and will not do business with him or employ him, thinking in their minds that a poor man cannot do a job well; to one whose children have started to weep and wince with pain and whose wife has begun to ask for mercy and complain, though none spare a thought for the youth she’s lost in raising her children?” or if someone says to him, “Have you any refuge for a guest who’s a stranger and has none to take his side against danger?” he’ll say, “I didn’t come to you to provide such things. I came only to inspect the looms on which you weave your goods, and their colors, which cannot rival the brilliant colors that I have in my saddlebag. It is no concern of mine to look into what might bring you ease; my ease lies in your troubles. If all your workshops fall idle because you’re incapable of producing these colors of mine that I have displayed to you in the shape of samples and specimens and you thus earn the reproof of your merchants, plowmen, and physicians, that is of no importance to me.”