(42:21) Do they have any associates (of Allah) who have laid down for them a way pertaining to faith which Allah did not sanction? *38 But for the fact that a decree had already been made, the matter between them would have been decided once and for all. Surely a grievous chastisement awaits the wrong-doers. *39

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*38) In this verse the word shuraka (associates) obviously does not mean those beings whom the people invoke, or those in whose names they make offerings, or those before whom they carry out rites of worship, but inevitably it refers to those men whom the people regard as associates in the authority and sovereignty of Allah, whose thoughts, creeds, ideologies and philosophies they believe in, whose values they adroit, whose moral precepts and norms of civilization and culture they accept, and whose laws and rules and regulations they adopt to their rituals and rites of worship, in their personal and collective lives, in their trade and business dealings, in their politics and governments, as if they constituted the shari'ah that they had to follow faithfully. This is a complete code of life which the inventors invented against the legislation of AIlah, Lord of the worlds, without His sanction and followed by the followers. This is the same sort of shirk as prostrating oneself before another and invoking another than Allah. (For further explanation, see An Nisa: 60; AI-Ma'idah: 87; AI.An'am: 121, 136. 137; At-Taubah: 31; Yunus: 59; IbrahIm: 22; An-Nahl: 115-116; AI.Kahf: 52: AI-Qasas: 62.64 : Saba : 41; Ya Sin: GO and the relevant.E N.'s)
*39) That is, 'This is such a boldness against Allah that had not judgement been deferred till Resurrection, the torment would have been sent down on every such person, who in spite of being Allah'. servant, enforced his own religion and way of life on Allah's earth, and those people also would have been visited by it, who forsook Allah's Religion and accepted the religion invented by others."