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ascribing partners to God and worshipping idols, instead of his Lord, and his troops were all idolaters like himself.
One day, as he sat on the throne of his kingship, compassed about with the grandees of his realm, there came in to him a man, whose face lighted up the whole divan with its brightness. My father looked at him and saw him clad in a green habit, tall of stature and with hands that reached below his knees. He was of reverend and majestic aspect and light shone from his face. Quoth he to my father, ‘O rebel, O idolater, how long wilt thou be deluded to worship idols and leave the service of the All-knowing King? Say, “I testify that there is no god but God and that Mohammed is His servant and His apostle,” and embrace Islam, thou and thy people, and put away from you the worship of idols, for they neither advantage nor intercede. None is worshipworth save God alone, who raised up the heavens without pillars and spread out the earths, in mercy to His creatures.’
‘Who art thou,’ asked my father, ‘O man that rejectest the worship of idols, that thou sayst thus? Fearest thou not that they will be wroth with thee?’ ‘The idols are stones,’ answered the stranger; ‘their wrath cannot hurt me nor their favour profit me. So do thou send for thine idol which thou worshippest and bid all thy people bring each his idol: and when they are all present, do ye pray them to be wroth with me and I will pray my Lord to be wroth with them, and ye shall see the difference between the anger of the creature and that of the Creator. For your idols, ye fashioned them yourselves and the devils clad themselves therewith as with a garment, and they it is who speak to you from within the bellies of the idols, for your idols are made and my God is the maker, to whom nought is impossible. If the True appear to you, do ye follow it, and if the False, do ye leave it.’ Quoth they, ‘Give us a proof of thy god, that we may see it.
