those whom they invoke besides Allah, lest they insult Allah in hostility without knowledge.”

Pharaoh’s people may have turned away from Allah altogether after previously associating partners with Him, accepting Pharaoh’s declarations:

“I am your lord, the Most High,”

and:

“I know of no god for you other than myself.”

Thus, when the believer addressed them, he mentioned both matters, saying:

“You call me to disbelieve in Allah and associate with Him that of which I have no knowledge.”

He mentioned disbelief in Him, which may include denying His existence, and also mentioned associating partners with Him. His words thus encompassed both positions and both states.

It has therefore become clear that one way an arrogant person becomes a polytheist is by worshipping other deities while arrogantly refusing to worship Allah. Calling this polytheism, however, is analogous to doing so in the case of someone who arrogantly refuses to devote his worship exclusively to Allah. As the Most High says:

“Indeed, whenever it was said to them, ‘There is no deity worthy of worship except Allah,’ they would grow arrogant and say, ‘Are we really to abandon our gods for a mad poet?’”

These people are both arrogant and polytheists; their arrogance consists in refusing to devote their worship exclusively to Allah. An arrogant person who does not outwardly acknowledge Allah, such as Pharaoh, is therefore greater in unbelief than they are. Iblīs, who commands and loves all of this and arrogantly refuses to worship and obey his Lord, is greater in unbelief than these people, even though he knows that Allah exists and knows His greatness—just as Pharaoh, too, knew that Allah exists.

Since religious innovations and sins constitute a branch of unbelief and derive from its branches, just as acts of obedience are all a branch of faith and derive from it, and since it is known that someone who knows the truth but does not follow it is wayward and resembles the Jews, whereas someone who worships Allah without knowledge or revealed law is misguided and resembles the Christians—as some of the early generations used to say:

“Whoever among the scholars becomes corrupt