because Allah had given him kingship? When Abraham said, ‘My Lord is the One who gives life and causes death,’ he said, ‘I give life and cause death.’ Abraham said, ‘Allah brings the sun from the east, so bring it from the west.’ Thus the disbeliever was confounded. And Allah does not guide the wrongdoing people.”

Allah also relates that Abraham asked Him to bring the dead to life, so Allah commanded him to take four birds. Thus he affirmed creation and resurrection—the beginning and the return—and belief in Allah and the Last Day. The unbelievers among the Sabians and polytheists, including philosophers and others like them, reject both of these or one of them. It was to people of their kind that Abraham, Allah’s intimate friend, was sent. Some of them deny the existence of the Creator; others deny His attributes; still others deny that He creates, saying instead that He is a cause. Most of them deny the resurrection of the dead. They are polytheists who worship the heavenly bodies above and earthly idols below.

Abraham, Allah’s intimate friend—may Allah’s blessings be upon him—refuted all of this. He affirmed the lordship of his Lord, as in this verse. He affirmed sincere devotion to Him alone and rejected associating partners with Him, as in Sūrat al-An‘ām and elsewhere. He also affirmed resurrection after death. Firmly established in his religion were his love for Allah and Allah’s love for him, Allah having taken him as an intimate friend.