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Sura 53
Aya 23
23
إِن هِيَ إِلّا أَسماءٌ سَمَّيتُموها أَنتُم وَآباؤُكُم ما أَنزَلَ اللَّهُ بِها مِن سُلطانٍ ۚ إِن يَتَّبِعونَ إِلَّا الظَّنَّ وَما تَهوَى الأَنفُسُ ۖ وَلَقَد جاءَهُم مِن رَبِّهِمُ الهُدىٰ

Muhammad Asad

These [allegedly divine beings] are nothing but empty names which you have invented - you and your forefathers - [and] for which God has bestowed no warrant from on high.1 They [who worship them] follow nothing but surmise and their own wishful thinking2 - although right guidance has now indeed come unto them from their Sustainer.
  • Cf. 12:40.
  • An allusion to the pagan idea that those goddesses, as well as the angels, would act as "mediators" between their worshippers and God: a wishful idea which lingers on even among adherents of higher religions in the guise of a veneration of saints and deified persons.