He then offers a parable for his audience about a young man whose journey toward truth takes him from material comfort to spiritual angst, finally culminating in God's illuminating for him the true path—a path which obliges the man to call others to follow him on it. This obligation has been codified in a spiritual hierarchy in which each successive link in the chain of precedence is duty-bound to bring others into the fold. Thus is the man in the parable obliged to wander through many countries as a teacher, until he comes upon a foreign community which is divided on questions of spirituality, and whose interest in religion, proximity to the true path and shared religious affiliation with Islam necessitate the man's intervention.