Had He wished, He would have surely guided you all.

📌Had He wished, He would have surely guided you all.’ Say, ‘Bring your witnesses who may testify that Allah has forbidden this.’ So, if they testify, do not testify with them, and do not follow the desires of those who deny Our signs, and those who do not believe in the Hereafter and equate [others] with their Lord.” [^10] Sections of these verses hint at the absurdity and preposterousness of idolatrous beliefs: “Say, ‘Do you have any [revealed] knowledge that you can produce before us?’” “You follow nothing but conjectures.” “And you do nothing but surmise.” “To Allah belongs the conclusive argument.” “Bring your witnesses who may testify that Allah has forbidden this…” Note: Some people have sought to claim that idolatry was a religion of fatalism and determinism by adducing verse 148, but this claim is not correct because these verses do not prove their claim.

However, the outward meaning of the verse is that idolaters used to claim that they had Divine proof to ascertain their creed. Allah has nullified this claim. Tenth verse: “Say, ‘Tell me about what you invoke besides Allah. Show me what [part] of the earth they have created. Do they have any share in the heavens?

Bring me a scripture [revealed] before this, or some vestige of [Divine] knowledge, should you be truthful?’” [^11] Eleventh verse: “They worship besides Allah that for which He has not sent down any authority, and of which they have no knowledge. And the wrongdoers shall have no help.” [^12] Twelfth verse: “Whoever invokes besides Allah another god of which he has no proof, his reckoning will indeed rest with his Lord.

Indeed, the faithless will not be felicitous.” [^13] Thirteenth verse: “They say, ‘Had the All-beneficent wished, we would not have worshipped.’ [^14] They do not have any knowledge of that, and they do nothing but surmise. Did We give them a Book before this, so that they are holding fast to it?

Rather, they say, ‘We found our fathers following a creed, and we are indeed guided in their footsteps.’ And so it has been that We did not send any warner to a town before you, without its affluent ones saying, ‘We found our fathers following a creed and we are indeed following in their footsteps.’ He would say, ‘What!

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