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Sura 23
Aya 91
91
مَا اتَّخَذَ اللَّهُ مِن وَلَدٍ وَما كانَ مَعَهُ مِن إِلٰهٍ ۚ إِذًا لَذَهَبَ كُلُّ إِلٰهٍ بِما خَلَقَ وَلَعَلا بَعضُهُم عَلىٰ بَعضٍ ۚ سُبحانَ اللَّهِ عَمّا يَصِفونَ

Muhammad Asad

Never did God take unto Himself any1 offspring, nor has there ever been any deity side by side with Him: [for, had there been any,] lo! each deity would surely have stood apart [from the others] in whatever it had created,2 and they would surely have [tried to] overcome one another! Limitless in His glory is God, [far] above anything that men may devise by way of definition,3
  • This allusion to the pre-Islamic Arabian belief in angels as "God's daughters" and the Christian dogma of Jesus' "sonship of God" connects with the statement "they are intent on lying [to themselves]", which has been explained in the preceding note.
  • This is how almost all the classical commentators explain the phrase la-dhahaba bi-ma khalaqa (lit., "would surely have taken away whatever he had created"), implying that in such a hypothetical case each of the gods would have been concerned only with his own sector of creation, thus causing complete confusion in the universe.
  • See note 88 on 6:100.