17لَو أَرَدنا أَن نَتَّخِذَ لَهوًا لَاتَّخَذناهُ مِن لَدُنّا إِن كُنّا فاعِلينَMuhammad Asad[for,] had We willed to indulge in a pastime, We would indeed have produced it from within Ourselves - if such had been Our will at all!1Lit. "if We had [ever] willed to do so": meaning that, had God ever willed to "indulge in a pastime (which being almighty and self-sufficient, He has no need to do), He could have found it within His Own Self, without any necessity to create a universe which would embody His hypothetical and logically inconceivable - will to "please Himself", and would thus represent a projection, as it were, of His Own Being. In the elliptic manner of the Qur'an, the above passage amounts to a statement of God's transcendence.