in a concise and elegant formulation, saying: “The meaning is: glorify your Lord while uttering His name, giving voice to it.” Likewise, “Glorify the name of your Lord” means: glorify your Lord while mentioning His name.

This insight is worth a journey—but only to someone who appreciates its worth. Praise be to Allah, who graciously bestows His bounty, and we ask Him to perfect His blessing.

Their third argument: They say that Allah Most High says:

12:40 “You worship besides Him nothing but names you have named.”

Yet what they worshipped were the things bearing those names.

The answer is: As you say, they did indeed worship the things named, but only because they had bestowed false names upon them, such as al-Lāt and al-'Uzzā. These are merely false, baseless names, with no reality corresponding to them. They called them gods and worshipped them because they believed that they truly possessed divinity. Yet they possess nothing of divinity except the names alone, without the reality those names denote.

Thus, they worshipped nothing but names with no corresponding realities. This is like someone who calls onion skins meat and eats them. He is told: “You have eaten nothing of meat but its name, not the thing itself.” Or someone who calls soil bread and eats it. He is told: “You have eaten nothing but the name of bread.” Indeed, this negation is even more emphatic in denying divinity to their gods, for their divinity has no reality whatsoever. The point here concerns nothing but the name itself.

Reflect, then, on this precious insight into the words of Allah Most High.

If it is asked: What is the significance of the preposition bā' (“with”) in His words, “So glorify the name of your Lord, the Most Great,” when it does not occur in His words, “Glorify the name of your Lord, the Most High”?

The answer is: Glorification may mean simply declaring Allah free of imperfection and remembering Him, without any further meaning. It may also mean prayer in addition to this: remembrance and declaring Him free of imperfection accompanied by action. This is why prayer is called glorification.

When glorification alone is intended, there is no place for the preposition bā', since the verb takes no preposition: you do not say, “I glorified with Allah.” But when you intend glorification accompanied by action—that is, prayer—you introduce bā' to indicate this intended meaning. It is as though you said: “Glorify, beginning with the name of your Lord,” or “uttering the name of your Lord,” just as you say: “Pray, beginning with His name,” or “uttering His name.” For this subtle reason—