For this reason, He, glorified be He, classes this as fabrication and falsehood, as the Companions of the Cave said:

“These people of ours have taken gods besides Him. Why do they not bring clear proof for them? Who, then, does greater wrong than one who fabricates a lie against Allah?”

Abraham, Allah’s close friend, said:

“You worship only idols besides Allah, and you invent falsehood.”

And Allah said:

“What do those who invoke partners besides Allah follow? They follow nothing but conjecture, and they do nothing but guess.”

That is: what do those who associate partners with Allah follow? They follow only conjecture and guesswork—that is, estimation. This is the correct interpretation: the word mā (“what”) is interrogative. It has also been said that it is a negative particle, and some, such as Abū al-Faraj, mention no other interpretation. This, however, is a weak interpretation, as has been explained elsewhere.

Hud said:

“Worship Allah; you have no deity worthy of worship except Him. You are nothing but fabricators.”

If the divinity of anything besides Allah is an invention that exists in thought and speech but has no existence in external reality—a matter of falsehood and false belief that does not correspond to reality—then the love, fear, and hope that its worshippers direct towards it follow from that false belief. This is like someone who believes a person to be truthful, accepts what he says, and bases many actions on his reports. When that person’s dishonesty becomes clear, the unsoundness of those actions becomes apparent. Such is the case with the followers of Musaylima and al-Aswad, and others associated with zawāyā and falsehoods, and with what they prescribe for their followers without Allah’s permission. This is unlike a truthful person and truthfulness.