However, because the term “god” (ilāh) appears in the Qur’an, and because the Arab translators of those philosophers’ books adopted it and explained its sense in their own language, the shared usage of the word in the two tongues has led to confusion for anyone who does not grasp what the Noble Qur’an means by “God” and what those thinkers mean by it; the two meanings are worlds apart.
Since the aim of those thinkers is merely to resemble Him, they in fact neither worship Him nor seek His help. They therefore stand outside the religion of the messengers who said, “You alone we worship and from You alone we seek help.” The whole point of imitation is to become like the one imitated, as far as one’s power permits. If one could replicate him in every respect, one would do so; failing that, one does whatever lies within one’s capacity. The goal is not to love the one being imitated or to humble oneself before him, but simply to match him—just as a pupil seeks to take his teacher’s place, or a son to take his father’s.
Such imitation neither necessitates love for the one imitated nor hatred toward him. Often it is accompanied by envy and rivalry, though it can occur without them. In most cases, however, when both parties coexist, competition and contentiousness are unavoidable; this is precisely what is meant by setting up a peer (nidd). For those people, the summit of perfection is that one of them should make himself a peer of God.
Even more astonishing is that these very people claim to uphold tawḥīd and go to extremes in denying any likeness, to the point of rejecting the divine attributes altogether. They vilify the People of the Book for the attributes mentioned in the Torah and elsewhere, and they repudiate the Torah’s statement, “We will create man in Our image, resembling Us.” Yet they maintain that one of them can fashion himself into a likeness of God! If, in their estimation, that wording can bear a sound meaning—namely, that resemblance is possible in some respects but not in others—then God is surely more capable of effecting that than any one of them. But if such resemblance is impossible