- “Your God is One God. There is no deity except Him—the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful” (2:163).
• The Exalted—who is the truest of all speakers—declares that He is “One God,” that is, absolutely unique in His essence, names, attributes, and actions. He has no partner, no namesake, no equal, no likeness, no peer; there is no creator or disposer of affairs besides Him.
• Once this is acknowledged, it follows that He alone is entitled to every form of worship and that none of His creation may be associated with Him, for He is “the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful,” possessed of a boundless mercy unmatched by any other—a mercy that has encompassed everything and reached every living being:
– By His mercy the creatures came into existence;
– by His mercy they attain every kind of perfection;
– by His mercy every calamity is averted from the servants;
– by His mercy He made Himself known to His servants through His attributes and favors;
– and by His mercy He clarified for them all that they need in matters of their religion and the welfare of their worldly life, by sending the messengers and revealing the scriptures.
• When it is realized that every blessing enjoyed by the servants—whether small or great—is from Allah, and that no created being can benefit anyone else, it becomes evident that no one is worthy of worship except the One who alone bestows blessings and repels harm. It therefore becomes incumbent upon the servants to single Him out with love, fear, hope, reverence, reliance, and every other act of obedience.
• Among the darkest forms of wrongdoing, the ugliest of transgressions, and the greatest misguidance is to turn away from His worship to the worship of slaves, to associate with the Almighty Lord creatures fashioned from dust, and to place a created being