share with Allah in creating the heavens and the earth, or in creating anything at all. Rather, they took them as intercessors and intermediaries. As the Most High says:

‘And they worship besides Allah that which neither harms them nor benefits them, and they say, “These are our intercessors with Allah.”’ 1 …”2. He also cited other texts.

Shaykh ʿAbd al-Latīf ibn ʿAbd al-Rahmān ibn Hasan Āl al-Shaykh (may Allah have mercy on him) says in refutation of this specious argument: “Polytheism consists in assigning a partner to Allah Most High in the inward and outward worship that He deserves and that belongs exclusively to Him, such as love, submission, reverence, fear, hope, turning to Him, reliance upon Him, acts of devotion, obedience, and other such forms of worship. Whoever associates anyone else with Allah in any of these has associated a partner with his Lord, equated another with Him, and set up one of His creatures as His rival. For this to constitute polytheism, it is not necessary that he believe that this being shares in lordship or independently exercises any of its prerogatives.

“What is truly astonishing is that people such as these read the Book of Allah, worship Him by reciting it, and may even know something of the rules of Arabic, yet in this matter they are among the most misguided of Allah’s creatures and the furthest from understanding His revelation and the Scripture He has sent down.”3.

This makes clear the falsity of the writer’s claim and how it throws the door to polytheism wide open. We seek refuge in Allah from His wrath and painful punishment.

I am not seeking here to gather the texts of the Quran and Sunnah that refute polytheism in all its forms, whether in supplication or otherwise. None of them mentions the qualification introduced by the writer. Nevertheless, it is worth citing one such proof, which has been described by some