The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 4) — Page 165
PT. 17 AL-ANBIYA' against idolatry that it disappeared from Arabia never to return. Not only did he condemn and forbid idol- worship and enjoin and impress upon his people the worship of One True God but also gave unanswerable arguments in support of monotheism and against polytheism and he fully succeeded in engendering in the minds of his followers an invincible faith in Divine Unity and an equally implacable hatred for shirk-setting up equals with God. In four short sentences of one of its shortest Surah Al-Ikhlāṣ, the Quran has refuted and demolished in a most beautiful and effective manner four forms of polytheism. The first verse proclaims the absolute Unity of God. It says: "Say, He is Allah, the One. " It means that out of ignorance and perversity man invents and indulges in most fantastic theories and ideas about God. But the central and pivotal fact about the Divine Being remains that He is absolutely One in every respect and manner. He is neither the beginning nor the end of anything and He is not like anything, nor any thing is like Him. To regard anything like Him is to impugn His absolute Unity. In the words, "Allah, the Independent and Besought of all," the Quran has demolished the second kind of shirk i. e. to ascribe Divine powers and attributes to other beings and things. The verse says that God has need of nobody but all beings and things have need of Him. It is therefore foolish and futile to have recourse to beings and things which themselves are wholly dependent upon God. The third 2079 CH. 21 verse, viz. "He begets not, nor is He begotten" refutes and repudiates the third kind of polytheism i. e. the doctrine of God being the father or son of anybody. The verse means to say that God is eternal and everlasting. He has begotten no son who should take His place, nor is He begotten of anyone from whom He should have inherited His Divine powers and attributes. He was always Independent and Besought of all and will ever be so. So we should worship Him and call on Him alone for the fulfilment of our needs and requirements. The verse "And there is none like unto Him," exposes the folly and futility of the fourth kind of shirk. It signifies that it is beyond any created thing to be His partner in Divinity i. e. to be like Him in His person or attributes. God is far exalted and above that to which man can aspire. However high man may rise, he cannot even touch the fringes of the precincts of Divinity and will ever remain God's servant. This is the most sublime conception of absolute Unity of God as taught and inculcated by the Quran. At another place (2:256) the Quran has shed further light on Divine Unity. It says: "There is no God but Allah, the Living, the Self-Subsisting and All-Sustaining. Slumber seizes Him not, nor sleep (i. e. no interruption ever takes place in His works). To Him belongs whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth. Who is he that will intercede with Him except by His permission (i. e. God grants the prayers of His servants but no one should think that He can compel God to accept His prayer. It is after He has