said, “The Messiah is the son of Allah,” while the polytheists maintained, “The angels are the daughters of Allah.” Allah invalidated all such claims with His words: “He begets not, nor was He begotten.” This is because—exalted and sublime is He—He is al-Awwal, the First, before Whom nothing existed. He alone is the First, whereas everything after Him came into being after previously not existing. The Lord, mighty and majestic, is pre-eternal and everlasting.

“And none is comparable to Him.” That is, no one matches or rivals Him—neither in knowledge, nor in power, nor in any other attribute. When the people of ʿĀd boasted of their might, saying, “Who is stronger than us in power?” Allah said: “Do they not see that Allah, who created them, is stronger than they in power? Yet they continued to reject Our signs, so We loosed upon them a screaming wind on ill-omened days” (Q 41:15–16). A mere wind—nothing but air, one of the softest of created things—utterly destroyed them while they were claiming, “Who is stronger than us in power?” By Allah, none is ever comparable to Him.

Know that the word kufuwan (comparable) in the verse admits three canonical readings: kufuwan, with a ḍammah on the fāʾ; kufʾan, with a hamzah and a sukun on the fāʾ; and kufuʾan, with a hamzah and a ḍammah on the fāʾ. When recited with the wāw, the fāʾ must carry a ḍammah. Many reciters are heard pronouncing it with a sukun alongside the wāw, and this is a linguistic error—so if you read it with the wāw, give the fāʾ its proper ḍammah.

The Prophet ﷺ swore that this sūrah is equivalent to one-third of the Qur’an, and he said