rightly guided; but whomever He leads astray, you will never find for him a protector to guide him.”

The One who is praised is never praised for mere absence or silence, unless these negate faults and deficiencies and thereby affirm their opposites: positive attributes of perfection. Otherwise, sheer negation contains neither anything praiseworthy nor any perfection.

Perfection.

Likewise, His praise of Himself for not having taken a child implies His perfect self-sufficiency, His freedom from need, His sovereignty, and the servitude of all things to Him. Taking a child is incompatible with all this, as Allah Most High said:

10:68 “They say, ‘Allah has taken a child.’ Glory be to Him! He is free of all need. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on earth.”

He also praised Himself for having no partner, which implies that He alone possesses lordship and divinity, and that He alone possesses those attributes of perfection that none besides Him can possess and thereby become His partner. Were He to lack these attributes, every existing thing would be more perfect than Him, for what exists is more perfect than what does not exist. Thus, He—glory be to Him—never praises Himself for an absence unless it implies the affirmation of a perfection. He praised Himself for not dying because this implies the perfection of His life. He praised Himself because neither drowsiness nor sleep overtakes Him, which implies His self-subsistence and His sustaining of all things. He praised Himself because nothing escapes His knowledge—not an atom’s weight on earth or in heaven, nor anything smaller or greater—owing to the perfection and all-encompassing nature of His knowledge. He praised Himself because He wrongs no one, owing to His perfect justice and goodness.

He praised Himself because vision cannot encompass Him, owing to His perfect greatness. He is seen but cannot be encompassed by sight, just as He is known but cannot be encompassed by knowledge. Merely denying that He can be seen would not constitute perfection, for what does not exist cannot be seen. There is therefore no perfection whatsoever in a thing’s simply being unseen. Rather, perfection lies in His being beyond the encompassing reach of sight or perception, owing to His own greatness and His exaltedness beyond His creatures’ ability to encompass Him. Likewise, He praised Himself for being free of heedlessness and forgetfulness, owing to the perfection of His knowledge.

Thus, every negation in the Quran by which He praises Himself is because it is incompatible with the affirmation of its contrary, and because it entails the perfect affirmation of its opposite. You now know that praise in its true sense depends upon the affirmation of attributes of perfection; denying them amounts to denying His praise, and denying praise necessarily entails affirming its opposite.