of companionship (maʿiyyah) and the effects that stem from it; on occasion those effects merge with the meaning itself, so the import varies from one context to another.

[The Qur’anic and Prophetic use of the term maʿiyyah in different settings]
The word maʿiyyah is employed in the Qur’an and the Sunnah in a variety of passages, and in each passage it implies matters that it does not imply elsewhere. Either its connotation shifts with the context, or it points to a common core shared by all its occurrences—while each situation retains its own distinctive feature. On either understanding, nothing in the term suggests that the Divine Essence is commingled with creation, such that one would be justified in claiming the word has been wrested from its apparent sense.

[The terms lordship and servitude and the creatures’ share in them]
Something comparable, in certain respects, is true of rubūbiyyah (lordship) and ʿubūdiyyah (servitude). Although all creatures share in the basic reality of divine lordship and subjection, when the magicians declared, “We believe in the Lord of the worlds, the Lord of Moses and Aaron” (al-Aʿrāf 121–122), the lordship that related to Moses and Aaron possessed an added specificity beyond the general lordship that embraces the whole creation. For whoever is granted by Allah a degree of perfection surpassing that of others is thereby nurtured by Him in a more complete fashion; accordingly, His lordship and nurturing of such a person are more perfect than they are for anyone else.

The same applies to His words, “a spring from which the servants of Allah will drink, causing it to gush forth abundantly” (al-Insān 6), and, “Glory be to Him who took His servant by night” (al-Isrāʾ 1).

For the term ʿabd (servant) sometimes refers to one who is merely subjected, and thus it encompasses all creatures, as in His words, “Indeed every—”