worships Allah while worshipping others alongside Him, as the People of the Cave said:
“And when you have withdrawn from them and from what they worship, except Allah.”
That is, you have withdrawn from their objects of worship, except Allah, for you have not withdrawn from Him. Likewise, the polytheists said of their objects of worship:
“We worship them only so that they may bring us nearer to Allah.”
They therefore worshipped others alongside Him. He did not deny that they performed the act, since they did perform it; rather, He denied that the description applied to them, because whoever worships anything other than Allah is not steadfast in worshipping Allah and cannot be described as such.
Reflect on this exquisite point. Implicit within it is that no one can be described as a worshipper of Allah, or as His servant who remains steadfast in worshipping Him, unless he devotes himself wholly to Him, dedicates himself entirely to Him, does not turn to anyone else, and associates no one with Him in worship. If he worships Him while associating others with Him, he is neither a worshipper of Allah nor His servant.
This is one of the profound meanings of this great and majestic surah, one of the two surahs of pure devotion to Allah, which is equivalent to a quarter of the Quran, as reported in some of the Sunan collections. Not everyone understands this; only those whom Allah grants understanding from Himself can grasp it. To Him belong all praise and gratitude.
As for the fifth question—why negation in this surah is expressed with lā rather than lan—the reason lies in what was established shortly before: negation with lā is more emphatic than negation with lan, and indicates its persistence and duration more clearly. Because its sound is prolonged and drawn out, the negation expressed through it is correspondingly prolonged and intensified. This is contrary to what the Jahmiyyah and the Muʿtazilah understood: that lan negates only the future and does not negate a present state whose negation continues into the future. This has already been explained in a manner you will scarcely find outside this commentary. Thus lā is necessarily the appropriate expression here. And Allah knows best.
As for the sixth question—the fact that this surah contains pure negation—this is precisely the distinctive feature of this great surah. It is the surah of dissociation from polytheism, as it has indeed been described: it is a declaration of dissociation from polytheism. Its foremost purpose, therefore, is the dissociation that is required. Yet it also contains an explicit affirmation. Thus His words, “Not