and He, Exalted is He, said:

“We have indeed sent a messenger to every community, telling them: ‘Worship Allah and shun the false deities.’” ⦗al-Naḥl 16:36⦘.

And He, Exalted is He, said:

“We never sent a messenger before you without revealing to him: ‘There is no god but I, so worship Me alone.’” ⦗al-Anbiyāʾ 21:25⦘.

Thus the Messiah—may Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him—and the messengers who came before him called people only to worship Allah alone, without partner. The Torah itself contains powerful passages to that effect. No prophet ever commanded the worship of an angel, a prophet, a star, or an idol, nor that intercession with Allah be sought from any dead or absent being, whether prophet or angel. Not one of the messengers was instructed to call upon the angels and say, “Intercede for us with Allah,” or to invoke dead or absent prophets and righteous people, saying, “Intercede for us with Allah.”

Likewise, they were never told to fashion their likenesses—neither three-dimensional statues that cast a shadow nor flat images on walls—nor to make supplicating and venerating those images an act of devotion that brings one near to Allah. It makes no difference whether a person intends, by such practice, to call upon the individuals represented by the statues, to honour them and seek their intercession, asking them to petition Allah and treating the statues merely as reminders of them, or whether he intends to call upon the statues themselves while being unaware that