to oneself could be more harmful and grievous than overstepping the limits of the Sharia and its important, established guidelines?

Then how can one who oversteps the guidelines of the Sharia in his supplication and transgresses its prescribed limits hope for an answer or expect acceptance? Allah neither loves nor approves of a supplication containing transgression, so how can the one who offers it hope that it will be answered and accepted?

Transgression in supplication encompasses many matters, varying in their gravity and in how far they depart from truth and moderation. Yet the gravest and most harmful form of transgression for a person is invoking someone other than Allah Most High. This is the greatest aggression and the basest humiliation and degradation. How could a created being direct his supplication, hope, humility, and submission toward another created being like himself—one who can neither give nor withhold, neither abase nor elevate—while forsaking the One in whose hand are the reins of all affairs and the keys of the heavens and the earth? Thus, anyone who invokes someone other than Allah in the hope of receiving an answer has reached the utmost limit of misguidance and will gain nothing from it but disappointment, deprivation, humiliation, and loss in this world and the Hereafter: “Who is more astray than one who invokes, besides Allah, those who will not respond to him until the Day of Resurrection and who are unaware of their invocation?” 1.

Another form of transgression in supplication is asking Allah, Glorious and Exalted, for something that it is impermissible to ask of Him, such as assistance in committing forbidden acts, perpetrating sins, and engaging in disobedience—for example, asking Allah to aid him on a journey intended for sin and falsehood, or to facilitate for him a path to indecency and aggression.