This noble verse is the greatest, best, and most sublime verse in the Quran, because it encompasses such momentous truths and noble attributes. For this reason, many hadiths encourage its recitation and making it part of one’s regular devotions—morning and evening, at bedtime, and after the prescribed prayers.
Allah, Most High, informs us about His noble Self that “there is no deity worthy of worship except Him”; that is, none is rightfully worshipped besides Him. He is the true God, to whom alone every form of worship, obedience, and devotion must be directed because of His perfection, the perfection of His attributes, and the immensity of His blessings. Moreover, a servant ought to be a true servant of his Lord, obeying His commands and avoiding His prohibitions. Every supposed deity besides Allah is false, and worshipping anything other than Him is therefore false, for everything besides Allah is created, deficient, governed, and utterly dependent in every respect. It therefore deserves no form of worship.
His words, “the Ever-Living, the Self-Sustaining Sustainer of all,” are two noble names that point to all the other Most Beautiful Names through denotation by correspondence, inclusion, and necessary entailment. The Ever-Living is the One whose life is perfect and necessarily entails all the attributes of His Essence, such as hearing, sight, knowledge, power, and the like. The Self-Sustaining Sustainer of all is the One who subsists by Himself and sustains everything else. This necessarily entails all the acts by which the Lord of all creation is described: He does whatever He wills, including His rising over the Throne, descent, speech and utterance, creation and provision, causing death and giving life, and every other form of governance. All of this falls within His self-subsistence and sustaining of all creation. Some meticulous scholars have therefore said that these two names constitute the Greatest Name of Allah: when He is invoked by it, He answers, and when He is asked by it, He gives.
Part of the perfection of His life and His sustaining of all is that “neither drowsiness nor sleep overtakes Him.” Drowsiness means light sleep. “To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth”; that is, He is the Owner, while everything besides Him is owned. He is the Creator, Provider, and Governor, while everything else is created, provided for, and governed. Nothing possesses so much as a speck’s weight of power for itself or for anyone else, whether in the heavens or on earth. Hence He says, “Who is it that can intercede with Him except by His permission?” That is, no one can intercede before Him without His permission. All intercession belongs to Allah, Most High. Yet when He wishes to show mercy to one of His servants, He permits whichever servant He wishes to honor to intercede on that person’s behalf. The intercessor does not initiate intercession before permission is granted.
Then He says, “He knows what lies before them,” meaning everything that has passed, “and what lies behind them,” meaning everything yet to come. His knowledge encompasses every detail of all things, earlier and later, outward and inward, unseen and witnessed. His servants possess no control whatsoever and not even a speck’s weight of knowledge, except what He, Most High, has taught them. Hence He says, “and they encompass nothing of His knowledge except what He wills. His Footstool extends over the heavens and the earth.” This demonstrates the perfection of His greatness and the vastness of His dominion. Such is the Footstool that it encompasses the heavens and the earth, despite their immensity and that of all they contain. Yet the Footstool is not the greatest of Allah’s creations. There is something greater than it—the Throne—as well as other things known only to Him.
At the greatness of these created things, minds are bewildered, eyes grow weary, mountains quake, and even the mightiest men recoil. What, then, of the greatness of their Creator and Originator, who has placed within them such wisdom and secrets as He has placed, and who holds the heavens and the earth lest they cease to be, without weariness or fatigue? Thus He says, “and preserving them does not weary Him”; that is, it does not burden Him. “And He is the Most High”—in His very Being, above His Throne; the Most High in His irresistible dominion over all creatures; and the Most High in rank because of the perfection of His attributes—“the Magnificent,” before whose magnificence the overwhelming might of tyrants dwindles and, beside whose majesty, the pride of conquering kings is humbled. Glory be to the One to whom belong supreme magnificence, immense grandeur, and irresistible power and mastery over all things.
This verse encompasses the affirmation of Allah’s exclusive right to worship, His sole Lordship, and His Names and Attributes. It also affirms the all-encompassing nature of His ownership and knowledge, the vastness of His dominion, His majesty, glory, magnificence and grandeur, and His exaltedness above all His creatures. This verse alone constitutes a creed concerning Allah’s Names and Attributes, encompassing all His Most Beautiful Names and most exalted attributes. Then Allah, Most High, said:
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(256–257) “There is no compulsion in religion. Right guidance has become clearly distinct from error. Whoever rejects false gods and believes in Allah has grasped the firmest handhold, which will never break. And Allah is All-Hearing, All-Knowing.”
Allah, Most High, informs us that there is no compulsion in religion because there is no need to compel anyone to accept it. Compulsion is only used in relation to something whose signs are obscure and whose indications are unclear, or something utterly repugnant to people. As for this upright religion and straight path, its signs have become clear to reason, its ways are manifest, its true nature is evident, and right guidance has been distinguished from error. One granted success needs only the slightest reflection to prefer and choose it.
As for a person whose intent is evil, whose will is corrupt, and whose soul is wicked—one who sees the truth but chooses falsehood over it, and perceives what is good but inclines toward what is vile—Allah has no need to compel him to accept the religion, for such compulsion would yield neither result nor benefit. The faith of one compelled to believe is not valid.
This noble verse does not indicate that fighting belligerent disbelievers should be abandoned. Rather, it states that the true nature of the religion, considered in itself, necessarily leads every fair-minded person whose aim is to follow the truth to accept it. As for whether or not fighting is prescribed, the verse does not address that matter; the obligation to fight is instead derived from other texts. The noble verse may, however, be cited as evidence that the jizyah may be accepted from those who are not among the People of the Scripture, as is the view of many scholars.
Thus, whoever rejects false gods—abandoning the worship of everything besides Allah and obedience to Satan—and believes fully in Allah, with a faith that requires him to worship and obey his Lord, “has grasped the firmest handhold”; that is, the upright religion, whose foundations are firmly established and whose pillars are deeply rooted. Whoever holds fast to it may be completely confident of his course, for he has grasped the firmest handhold, “which will never break.”
By contrast, whoever reverses the matter, disbelieving in Allah and believing in false gods, has released the firmest handhold through which protection and salvation are attained, and has grasped every falsehood whose final end is Hellfire. “And Allah is All-Hearing, All-Knowing,” and He will recompense each of them according to the good and evil He knows to be within them. This is the ultimate end of both the one who grasps the firmest handhold and the one who does not.