(The second)

Allah says in His Book:

“Do not set up another god alongside Allah, lest you be cast into Hell, blamed and rejected.”

He, the Most High, also says:

“So do not invoke another god alongside Allah, or you will be among those who are punished.”

And He says:

“Do not invoke another god alongside Allah. There is no deity worthy of worship except Him. Everything will perish except His Face.”

Thus, He forbade setting up or invoking another god alongside Him. He did not forbid affirming that a created being exists with Him, or saying that with Him there is a servant whom He owns, a needy being subject to His lordship, or something existent that He created. Likewise, He said:

“There is no deity worthy of worship except Him.”

He did not say, “Nothing exists but He,” “There is no ‘He’ but He,” or “Nothing is with Him except Himself,” in the sense that He is the very identity and essence of existing things.

Similarly, He said:

“Your God is one God.”

He thereby affirmed His oneness in divinity; He did not say that all existing things are one. The affirmation of oneness taught in Allah’s Book is therefore the affirmation of His exclusive divinity: that you neither set up nor invoke any other god alongside Him. How can this be equated with making existence itself identical with Him?

Furthermore, His prohibition against setting up or invoking another god alongside Him proves that this is possible, as was done by the polytheists who invoked other gods alongside Allah. If those gods were identical with Him—and nothing whatsoever were with Him—it would be impossible to invoke other gods alongside Him.

These texts therefore show that there are things with Him that are not gods, and that they must neither be made into gods nor claimed to be gods. Moreover, according to the heretics, anything may be worshipped and anything may be invoked, since worshipping anything other than Him is inconceivable: He is those very things.