The third category:

This complements and completes the second category. The first serves as a set of preliminaries, and the third as supplements. The second, however, is the purpose for which people were created, as Allah Most High says:

“And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me.”

This is because worship and religious devotion, taken without qualification, include associating partners with Allah in all its forms, as practised by polytheists among the various nations. Religious devotion in this unqualified sense was the religion of the Sabians, the Tatars, and others like them, such as the Turks. They would sometimes worship Allah alone and build Him a temple that they called the Temple of the First Cause, and at other times worship things besides Him, including the seven planets, the fixed stars, and other objects. This contrasts with those whose worship is wholly polytheistic: they never worship Allah alone, but worship Him only while associating with Him others whom they regard as partners and intercessors.

Among the Sabians are those who worship Him with sincere and exclusive devotion, and others who associate partners with Him. The pure monotheists, however, all devote their religion exclusively to Him. Thus, among the Sabians are those who believe in Allah and the Last Day and do righteous deeds, unlike the polytheists and the Magians.

For this reason, the foundation of the religion of Islam, with which the Seal of the Messengers was sent, consists of two declarations:

The testimony that there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah affirms true and exclusive devotion to Him and negates all other forms of devotion, whether the devotion of polytheists or unqualified devotion that may include the devotion of polytheists. This declaration thus excludes every form of devotion incompatible with that prescribed by religion, whether a form peculiar to the unbelievers or an unqualified form shared by them and others.