This verse, and others like it, refutes the Qadarites, who claim that their actions do not fall within the power of Allah, Exalted is He. Their actions are among the things encompassed by His statement: “Surely Allah has power over all things.”
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(21–22) “O mankind, worship your Lord, who created you and those before you, so that you may attain piety; who made the earth a resting place for you and the sky a canopy, and sent down water from the sky, bringing forth fruits thereby as provision for you. So do not set up rivals to Allah while you know.”
This is a universal command addressed to all (1) people, enjoining something of universal scope—namely, comprehensive worship: carrying out Allah’s commands, avoiding His prohibitions, and affirming the truth of what He has revealed. Thus He commanded them to fulfill the purpose for which He created them. Allah, Exalted is He, said: “I did not create jinn and mankind except to worship Me.”
He then established the obligation of worshipping Him alone by explaining that He is your Lord, who has nurtured you with every kind of blessing. He created you after you had not existed, created those before you, and bestowed upon you blessings both outward and inward. He made the earth a resting place upon which you can settle and benefit from buildings, agriculture, tilling, travel from place to place, and its many other kinds (2) of benefit. He made the sky a canopy over your dwelling and placed within it benefits indispensable to your necessities and needs, such as the sun, the moon, and the stars.
“And He sent down water from the sky.” The “sky” [is] everything above you; hence, the commentators said that “sky” here refers to the clouds. Allah, Exalted is He, sent down water from them and “thereby brought forth fruits,” such as grains and the produce of date palms, fruit trees, [crops], and the like, “as provision for you,” through which you obtain your livelihood, nourish yourselves, live, and enjoy its fruits.
“So do not set up rivals to Allah”—that is, peers and counterparts from among created beings whom you worship as you worship Allah and love as you love Allah. Yet they are like you: created, provided for, and governed. They do not possess even an atom’s weight in heaven or on earth, nor can they benefit or harm you. “While you know” that Allah has no partner or peer in creation, provision, governance, or worship (3). How, then, can you worship other gods alongside Him while knowing this? This is the most astonishing of all marvels and the most foolish of all follies.
This verse combines the command to worship Allah alone, the prohibition against worshipping anything besides Him, and a clear and compelling proof that He alone must be worshipped and that worshipping anything else is false. That proof is [the mention of] Allah’s exclusive lordship, which entails that He alone creates, provides, and governs. If everyone acknowledges that He has no partner in any of these matters, they must likewise acknowledge that [Allah] has no partner in worship. This is the clearest rational proof of the Creator’s oneness and the falsity of polytheism.
His statement, “so that you may attain piety,” may mean that when you worship Allah alone, you thereby guard yourselves against His wrath and punishment because you have fulfilled the means that ward them off. It may also mean that when you worship Allah, you become among the people of piety, who are characterized by it. Both meanings are correct and inseparably connected. Whoever worships Allah fully is among the people of piety, and whoever possesses piety will be delivered from Allah’s punishment and wrath. Allah, Exalted is He, then said: