(17–23) “Can the One who creates be like one who creates nothing? Will you not then take heed? If you tried to count Allah’s blessings, you could never enumerate them. Indeed, Allah is All-Forgiving, Most Merciful. Allah knows what you conceal and what you disclose. Those whom they invoke besides Allah create nothing; they themselves are created. They are dead, not alive, and do not know when they will be resurrected. Your God is One God. As for those who do not believe in the Hereafter, their hearts are in denial and they are arrogant. Without doubt, Allah knows what they conceal and what they disclose. Indeed, He does not love the arrogant.”
After mentioning the magnificent things He created and the abundant blessings He bestowed, Allah Most High states that none resembles Him, none is His equal, and none is His rival. He says: “Can the One who creates”—all created beings, doing whatever He wills—“be like one who creates nothing,” whether little or much? “Will you not then take heed,” and recognize that the One who alone creates is most deserving of all worship? Just as He alone creates and governs, so too He alone is God, alone is to be affirmed as One, and alone deserves all worship.
Just as He had no partner when He brought you and all others into being, do not set up rivals alongside Him in worship; rather, devote the religion sincerely to Him. “If you tried to count Allah’s blessings”—merely to count them, without even giving thanks—“you could never enumerate them,” let alone duly thank Him for them. His outward and inward blessings to His servants are as numerous as their every breath and moment. ⦗438⦘ They encompass every kind of blessing, including those His servants know and those they do not, as well as the afflictions He averts from them; they are too numerous to count. “Indeed, Allah is All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.” Despite the abundance of His blessings, He accepts from you even a little gratitude.
Just as His mercy is vast, His generosity universal, and His forgiveness encompasses His servants, His knowledge also encompasses them: “He knows what you conceal and what you disclose.” This is unlike those worshipped besides Him, for “they create nothing,” whether little or much, while “they themselves are created.” How could they create anything when their very existence depends upon Allah Most High?
Moreover, they possess no attribute of perfection whatsoever—neither knowledge nor anything else. They are “dead, not alive”: they neither hear, see, nor comprehend anything. Would you then take these as gods besides the Lord of all worlds? Woe to the minds of the polytheists—how misguided and corrupt they are! They have gone astray concerning something whose falsehood is utterly obvious, equating that which is deficient in every respect—possessing no attribute of perfection and performing no action—with the One who is perfect in every respect, who possesses every attribute of perfection in its fullest and greatest form. His is the knowledge that encompasses all things, universal power, and vast mercy that fills every realm. To Him belong all praise, glory, grandeur, and majesty—qualities of which no created being can comprehend even a part. For this reason, He says:
“Your God is One God.” He is Allah, the One, the Unique, the Self-Sufficient Master, who neither begets nor has any equal.
The hearts of the people of faith and sound reason therefore revere and exalt Him, and they love Him deeply. They dedicate to Him every bodily and financial act of devotion within their ability, together with the deeds of their hearts and limbs, and they extol Him by His most beautiful names and His holy attributes and acts. But “as for those who do not believe in the Hereafter, their hearts are in denial” of this tremendous truth—which none denies except the most ignorant and obstinate of people—namely, that Allah alone is entitled to worship; “and they are arrogant,” refusing to worship Him.
“Without doubt”—that is, certainly and inevitably—“Allah knows what they conceal and what they disclose” of their vile deeds. “Indeed, He does not love the arrogant”; rather, He detests them most intensely and will repay them in kind for their deeds: “Indeed, those who are too arrogant to worship Me will enter Hell in utter humiliation.”