TRANSLATION
God does not forgive any assignment of divinity other than to Him, and He forgives any lesser sins as He pleases. Whoever sets up a partner with God has indeed stepped far away from the right path. Besides God, they invoke idols and inanimate objects for devotion. But they invoke none but the devil who reveled against God and whom God had forsaken, for he said, “I will lead astray a segment of your people, consume them to vain desires, and make them do things such as cut the ears of cattle [as sacrifice to idols] and incite them to corruption and alter the nature of creation. Whoever takes the devil as a friend over God suffers a clear loss. The devil promises and incites false hopes and vain desires—such promises are nothing but deception. The destination of those who follow the devil is Hell, and they will find no way to escape from it.275
But whoever does believe [in God] and does good, God promises Paradise of peace and plenty [in which the river flows]; God’s promise is truth—and who is more truthful than God? The world does not operate according to your wishful thinking and vain desires or such desires of the people who were given divine scripts before. Whoever does evil will face its consequences and will have no helper to protect against God’s will. Anyone who does good—be it male or female—and also believes in God will enter Paradise and will not be treated unjustly, even by a whit. 276
Who is better in guidance than he or she who submits to God entirely while doing good to others and follows the guidance of Abraham, who removed himself from all evils and was a friend of God? To God belongs all that is in the universe and on the Earth. God encompasses all things and affairs!
INTERPRETATION
275. The notion of monotheism in Islam calls for absolute clarity—no assignment of any divinity or devotion to anyone other than God Almighty. Everybody and everything else is God’s creation and are His servants in obligation and utterly dependent on God’s will. Prophet Abraham, who is acknowledged as the father of three major religions of today—Islam, Christianity, and Judaism—is considered one of the foundational figures of monotheism in known human history. The Qur’an calls all faithful, especially Jews, Christians, and Muslims, to align their faiths and conducts in accordance with Abraham. Making any form of animate objects as deity, worshipping one of God’s creations rather than the One God Himself, showing any form of devotion to another human being, which seemingly makes such individuals partners with God, and so forth are unacceptable in Islamic teaching and in the original teachings of all major religions. All such practices and religious deviations are considered as worshipping the devil, who is declared in the Qur’an as an avowed enemy to humankind.
276. Another foundational understanding in Islam is that God is the preserver of truth, justice, and equality, whereas the devil incites disharmony, envy, and inequality. God has given freedom to the devil to use false hopes and vain desires as his tricks to beguile human beings, except those who have a firm conviction in God and in the guidance that came from divine revelations as well as the innate nature and predisposition already ingrained in the human soul by God.
REFLECTION
The effects of good and evil and the sources of good and evil are matters of great concern and interest to all leaders and thinkers in human communities from time immemorial. The innate drive for truth and goodness and instinctive distaste for evil and injustice are sufficient testimonies to our human purpose and the presence of God’s grace to His creation. The issue of individual accountability and collective responsibility to promote goodness, to eliminate evil, and to establish belief in God is the true recipe for our success in this world and in the hereafter.
ACTION
Each one of us has to take this guidance and our innate predispositions to heart and bring to bear our active physical exertion so that we can think, act, and shape our world accordingly. This is the only way to demonstrate our obligations to God and to ensure human development worthy of God’s creation!