nor would he ever command you to take the angels and the prophets as lords. Would he command you to disbelief after you have already submitted? (3:80)

Say, “Call upon those whom you claim besides Allah. They do not possess even an atom’s weight in the heavens or on the earth, nor do they have any share in either of them, nor is any supporter forthcoming from among them. Intercession with Him is of no avail except for the one to whom He gives permission.” (34:22–23)

And how many an angel there is in the heavens whose intercession will be of no benefit whatsoever, except after Allah has granted leave to whom He wills and is pleased. (53:26)

They do not intercede except for those with whom He is pleased, and they stand in awe of Him out of fear. (21:28)

Passages of this kind abound throughout the Qur’an.

The pagan Arabs—despite their idolatry and unbelief—still held that the angels are created beings. Even those among them who said the angels are God’s daughters affirmed that they are brought into existence, and they claimed that He had married the jinn and that the angels were the offspring of that union.

Their assertion is of the same species as the Christians’ claim that the Messiah is the Son of God even though Mary is his mother; for this reason the Almighty pairs the two assertions together in the Qur’an.

The position of these philosophers, however, is worse than all of the foregoing. Those among them who admit the validity of prophethood say that the angels are the ten intellects, which they regard as eternal without beginning. In their scheme the Intellect is the lord of everything other than the Lord Himself—something that neither the Jews, nor the Christians, nor the pagan Arabs ever asserted, for none of them claimed that an angel is the lord of the entire universe.

They further maintain that the “Active Intellect” is the originator of all that lies beneath the lunar sphere—another form of unbelief not even reached by the disbelievers among the People of the Book or the idolaters of the Arabs.