concerning both groups. Allah Most High thus made clear here: “Those whom you worshipped besides Me are My servants; they will never disdain to worship Me. Were they both to disdain to worship Me, I would subject them both to a painful punishment.” The Messiah is the visible one, and he belongs to humankind. This explanation, however, is open to question. Allah knows best its true meaning.

We then say:

If this is what is intended, there is nothing to dispute. But if the intended meaning is a progression from the lower to the higher, then know—may Allah illuminate your heart and open your breast to Islam—that the angels possess distinctive qualities which human beings do not, especially in this world. No discerning person doubts this: at present, they occupy an exalted station, are closer to Allah, more prominent in bodily form, greater in character, more beautiful in appearance, longer-lived, and more blessed in their effects, besides other praiseworthy qualities, some of which we know and others we do not. Human beings, too, possess distinctive qualities and advantages.

The question, however, concerns these two sets of advantages considered as a whole: which is superior?

This approach lays the groundwork for understanding this verse and what follows it. Yet the question goes beyond this. Wherever something entails the superiority of angels, it is because of matters in which they are distinguished and which are peculiar to them. Those beneath them in such matters should not claim superiority over them on grounds connected with those very distinctions.

Thus, if the Messiah were hypothetically to disdain to worship Allah, this could only be on account of the signs with which Allah supported him—such as healing those born blind and those afflicted with leprosy, raising the dead, and other such things—and because his creation differed from that of the other descendants of Adam, and he was granted asceticism in his turning away from this world and all it contains. Yet there is not one of these qualities in which the angels do not excel him, for they were all created from