﴿ وَيَعْبُدُونَ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ مَا لَا يَضُرُّهُمْ وَلَا يَنفَعُهُمْ وَيَقُولُونَ هَٰٓؤُلَآءِ شُفَعَٰٓؤُنَا عِندَ ٱللَّهِ ۚ قُلْ أَتُنَبِّـُٔونَ ٱللَّهَ بِمَا لَا يَعْلَمُ فِى ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَلَا فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ ۚ سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ عَمَّا يُشْرِكُونَ ﴾

“and [neither will] they [who] worship, side by side with God, things or beings that can neither harm nor benefit them, saying [to themselves], "These are our intercessors with God!" Say: "Do you [think that you could] inform God of anything in the heavens or on earth that He does not know? Limitless is He in His glory, and sublimely exalted above anything to which men may ascribe a share in His divinity!"”

The events that occur in this world of ours seem, outwardly, to be the result of certain material causes, but the reality is that God’s control and management have been the underlying factors in all these events. In this world nobody has any personal or intrinsic power at all. A man is a monotheist (believing in the oneness of God) if he goes beyond the outwardly apparent phenomena and reaches the invisible God through them. As opposed to this, he is a polytheist (believing in partners to God) if he can go no further than outwardly apparent phenomena and if he confers on created things the status of their Creator. In this world nobody except God has the power to grant benefits or to inflict harm. A person who realises this truth devotes all his attention to God. He worships only God; he fears only Him and reposes his hopes in Him alone; he makes the one and only God his all. Unlike him, those who are preoccupied by mere things, make somebody other than God their God, according to their inclinations, and attach to these false gods such hopes and fears as should have been directed towards the one and only God. One form of these wrongful ideas is the belief in ‘recommendation.’ People suppose that there are some superior beings among human beings and among creatures other than human beings, who are holy in the eyes of God; God hears their recommendation and on the basis of this, He takes a decision about granting worldly provision and salvation in the after-life. But this kind of belief is false; it amounts to an underestimation of God’s godliness. God is free of every kind of shirk (imputing partners to God). No such belief befits the image of the qualities of God as is introduced and projected by the immense universe created by Him. Any such belief would mean that God is not what He seems to be in the mirror of His creative attributes, or that there is a contradiction in His attributes. Obviously, neither of these alternatives is possible.