22وَيَومَ نَحشُرُهُم جَميعًا ثُمَّ نَقولُ لِلَّذينَ أَشرَكوا أَينَ شُرَكاؤُكُمُ الَّذينَ كُنتُم تَزعُمونَMuhammad Asadfor one Day We shall gather them all together, and then We shall say unto those who ascribed divinity to aught beside God: "Where, now, are those beings whom you imagined to have a share in God's divinity?"1Lit., "those [God-]partners of yours whom you supposed [to exist]". Whenever the term shuraka' (pl. of sharik) is used in the Qur'an with reference to beliefs, it invariably denotes real or imaginary beings or forces to whom one ascribes a share in God's divinity: consequently, this concept - and its utter condemnation in Islam - relates not merely to the worship of false deities but also to the attribution of semi-divine qualities and powers to saints (in the liturgical sense of this word), as well as to abstract notions like wealth, social status, power, nationality, etc., to which men so often ascribe an objective influence on human destinies.