liars and placed them on a par with Allah’s messengers, so too the disbelievers sometimes deny the Creator and the names and attributes that are His due, and sometimes assign Him rivals, counterparts, and equals, setting others on a par with their Lord. The former engage in the denial characteristic of the arrogant, and the latter in the conflation characteristic of the polytheists. Both arrogance and polytheism are contrary to Islam, even though they necessarily accompany one another, as we have explained all this elsewhere.