they mean to affirm what the Quran establishes about the polytheists: their acknowledgement of the Creator, the Provider, and the One who governs the affairs of creation. These are attributes and distinctive characteristics of lordship, which the polytheists believed in and acknowledged. Nor is this a general rule applying without exception to all polytheists. Some even associated partners with Allah in His lordship; some believed in certain aspects of His lordship but not others; and some, besides believing in the existence of Allah as the Creator and Provider, believed in the Hereafter, bodily resurrection, and the reckoning. As Zuhayr said:

It is deferred, recorded in a book, and kept
For a day of reckoning—or hastened, and vengeance exacted.

Some also believed in divine decree, besides believing in the existence of Allah as the Creator and Provider. As ʿAntarah said:

O ʿAbla, where is there any escape from death,
If my Lord in heaven has decreed it?

Hence al-Maqrīzī says: “… He—glory be to Him—thereby made clear that the polytheists held back only from affirming Allah’s oneness in worship, not His oneness in lordship. Nevertheless, some of them associated partners with Him in lordship, as will be explained later, Allah willing”1.

Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah says: “The point is that many among the people of polytheism and misguidance may attribute the existence of certain contingent beings or the occurrence of certain events to something other than Allah. Anyone who maintains this is necessarily committed to an event occurring without a cause. Yet despite their polytheism and the form of negation of lordship that their position entails, they do not affirm any partner alongside Allah who is equal to Him in His acts or His attributes”2.