—including Iblīs—that they are Allah’s daughters. Al-Kalbī said: “They said—may Allah curse them—‘Rather, He married one of the jinn, and the angels were born of their union.’”

Regarding His words:

“And they have falsely attributed sons and daughters to Him without knowledge.”

Some commentators, such as al-Thaʿlabī, said: “The Arab disbelievers said that the angels and idols were Allah’s daughters; the Jews said that Ezra was Allah’s son; and the Christians said that the Messiah was Allah’s son.”

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As for those Arabs who used to say that the angels were Allah’s daughters, and the claim reported from them that He married among the jinn, who then bore Him the angels, Allah has refuted this through the impossibility of His having a consort and of any part coming from Him—for He is al-Samad (the One from whom nothing separates)—and through His words:

“He has no consort.”

This accords with what was explained earlier: generation can arise only from two sources, whether it is the generation of entities called substances or the generation of accidents and attributes. Indeed, entities can be generated only through the separation of a part from the parent. Thus, if it is impossible for Him to have a consort, it is impossible for Him to have a child. They all knew that He had no consort, whether from among the angels, the jinn or humankind. None of them claimed that He had a consort, and so He used this as an argument against them. As for the report that some Arab disbelievers claimed He married among the jinn, this is open to question, for