“…whom you used to worship instead of Allah. Can they help you, or even help themselves?’ Then they will be flung into it headlong, both they and the misleaders, and every last host of Iblis. And there, as they quarrel among themselves, they will say, ‘By Allah, we were indeed in manifest error when we treated you as equals to the Lord of all worlds.’”

Such is the fate of those who merely placed the created on the same level as the Lord of all worlds—so what of those who go so far as to deem every creature superior to Him?

If it is objected, “They neither understood this consequence nor intended it,” we respond: we have never claimed that they deliberately embraced such falsehood; rather, it is the unavoidable outcome of their position. That inescapable outcome reveals the extreme corruption of their doctrine and the depth of their ignorance of Allah, Exalted is He. Indeed, they are more astray than the Jews, the Christians, the pagan Arabs, and others among the idolaters, for those communities still revere the Creator more than these negators do.

If you do not know, that ignorance is a calamity;
But if you do know, the calamity is far greater.

The term “composition” (tarkīb) is equivocal and applied to several meanings.

What they flee from under the heading of “composition” we have examined elsewhere. We showed that the word is ambiguous. It can denote the composition of a body from parts that were previously separate and then joined—such as the blending of oxymel and other medicines, or of foods, drinks, garments, and dwellings whose constituent elements were disparate until they were brought together and combined into a composite state.

The word may also signify a composition in which the two things do not intermingle, as when one says, “He fixed the door into its place,” or “He drove the nail into the door.” This sense is narrower than the first and is the meaning most commonly intended in ordinary speech. Concerning it the Exalted says, “In whatever form He willed, He fashioned you” (Qur’an 82:8). It is obvious that no rational person would claim that Allah, Exalted be He, is composite in either of these two senses.

Composition may further be predicated of something whose parts could, in principle, be separated from one another—such as the humors and limbs of a human being. Even though one does not conceive of those parts as once scattered and then gathered, Allah nonetheless created him