—is such that there is no deity besides Him; nothing can frustrate His power. When He wills something, He only says to it, “Be,” and it is.

• This passage, therefore, establishes Allah’s power and its total, unrestricted reach over all things.

• As for the phrase that some writers use—“He is powerful over whatever He wills”—it is mistaken, for Allah did not tie His power to His will. Rather, He said, “He is All-Powerful over every thing.” So utter exactly what Allah has uttered. The qualified wording appears only in His statement, “and He is, when He wills, able to gather them together” (Q 42: 29), because that gathering has an appointed time in the future, and He is able to assemble them then—the inhabitants of the heavens and the earth alike. He, the Exalted, also said, “And among His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the living creatures He has dispersed throughout them; and He is, when He wills, able to gather them together” (Q 42: 29).

This is tawḥīd al-ulūhiyyah—the oneness of worship. “There is no deity,” meaning: none is rightfully worshipped except Him.

But if you say, “There is no object of worship except Him,” or “There is no object of worship besides Him,” this is incorrect, for many things are in fact worshipped besides Allah. Saying, “There is no object of worship except Allah” effectively turns every worshipped thing into Allah, which is the creed of the pantheistic monists. If the speaker actually believes that, he belongs to them; and if he repeats it merely by imitation, having heard it from others, it remains an error that he must rectify. Some people even begin