Surah Al-A'raaf (7) — Ayah 195

(Ayah 195) ➊ {اَلَهُمْ اَرْجُلٌ يَّمْشُوْنَ بِهَاۤ … :} Then where has your intellect gone that you call upon them for help and prostrate yourselves before them? The purpose of this verse is that although you have made hands, feet, eyes, and ears for these idols, still a living human being is in any case better than these idols, because due to these four limbs he possesses both perception and the ability to move. As for these idols, they have neither consciousness nor perception, nor sense nor movement.
➋ { قُلِ ادْعُوْا شُرَكَآءَكُمْ … :} That is, use all the force you can muster against me, and do not hold back any secret plan you can devise against me.

195. 1. That is, now none of these things remain with them. With death, the power to see, hear, understand, and walk has ended. Now, what is attributed to them are either self-carved idols of stone or wood, or domes, shrines, and sanctuaries that have been built over their graves, and thus the business of selling bones is flourishing.

195. 2. That is, if you are truthful in your claim that these are your helpers, then tell them to plot against me.

195. Do they have feet with which they walk, or hands with which they grasp, or eyes with which they see, or ears [193] with which they hear? Say, "Call upon your partners, and then plot against me and give me no respite [194]."

[193] The idols that the polytheists had made had hands, feet, noses, ears, eyes, etc.—everything. Allah Almighty asks the polytheists: regarding the feet you have made for these idols, can they walk with them? Because the purpose of making feet is so that one can walk with them. Then, when these feet cannot fulfill their purpose and objective, what is the benefit of making such feet? Similarly, the hands you have made for them—they cannot grasp anything with them. With the eyes you have made, they cannot see, nor can they hear with the ears. So what is the benefit of making such artificial limbs that do not fulfill their intended purpose?

Different Forms of Shirk:

There are three forms found in the polytheism of the polytheists. For example, if a person is a sun-worshipper, one form of shirk is that he specifically, at sunrise and sunset, faces the sun, stands respectfully with folded hands before it. The second form is that the spirits of these stars are worshipped and invoked when needed. The third form is that imaginary forms of these spirits are determined, and their statues are made and placed in temples or shrines, and then they are worshipped. The belief is that the spirit remains connected to the statue, so the worship performed for these statues is not for the statues themselves but for their spirits. This disease is also common among Muslims; instead of statues, they attach all these beliefs to the graves of the friends of Allah. Allah Almighty, in these verses, has refuted all these types of shirk.

[194]
The Polytheists’ Fear of Their Deities:

The polytheists of Makkah used to say to the Prophet (ﷺ): stop disrespecting our deities, otherwise these deities will bring some calamity upon you. As Allah Almighty has said in Surah Az-Zumar: ﴿وَيُخَوِّفُوْنَكَ بالَّذِيْنَ مِنْ دُوْنِهٖ﴾ [39: 36] The answer to this is being given here: tell these polytheists, “Call upon all your deities and do not hold back anything in trying to harm me, and do not grant me any respite. Whatever you can do, do it at once, and I will see what harm they can cause me.”