La aAAbudu ma taAAbudoon (surah Kafirun: 2)

Tafseer Tafheem-ul-Quran by Syed Abu-al-A'la Maududi

(109:2) I do not worship those that you worship *2

Laa a`budu ma t`abudoon

*2) This includes aII those deities whom the disbelievers and the polytheists have been, and are still, worshipping everywhere in the world, whether they are the angels, the jinn, prophets, saints, spirits of the living or dead men, or the sun, the moon, stars, animals, trees, rivers, idols and imaginary gods and goddesses. One may say that the pagans of Arabia acknowledged Allah also as a Deity and the other pagans of the world also have never disacknowledged Allah as a Deity till today. As for the followers of the earlier scriptures, they also acknowledge Allah alone as the real Deity. How then can it be correct to exonerate oneself froth the worship of all the deities of all those people, without' exception, when AIIah too is included among them? The answer is that if AIlah is worshipped along with others regarding Him as a Deity among other deities, the believer in Tauhid will inevitably express his inmunity from this worship, for in his sight Allah is oat a Deity out of a collection of deities, but He alone is the real Deity, and the worship of the collection of deities is no worship of Allah, although worship of Allah also is included in it. The Qur'an has clearly stated that Allah's worship is only that which does not have any tinge of the worship of another and in which man makes his worship exclusively Allah's. "And the only Command they were given, was to worship Allah, making their religion sincerely His, turning all their attention towards Him." (Al-Bayyinah: S). This subject has been explained at many places iu the Qur'an forcefully; for example, see Au-Nisa': 145-146, AI-A`raf :29, AzZumar: 2, 3, 11, 14, 15, A1-Mu'min: 14, 64-66. It has been further explained in a Hadith Qudsi (i.e. Divine Word revealed through the mouth of the Prophet) in which the messenger of Allah says: "Allah says: I am Self-Sufficient of the association of every associate most of all. Whoever performed an act in which he associated another also with Me, 1 am free of it, and the entire act is for him who was associated." (Muslim, Musnad Ahmad, Ibn Majah). Thus, acknowledging Allah as one of the two, three or many gods and serving and worshipping others along with Him is, in fact, the real kufr, declaration of immunity from which is the object of this Surah.