Surah An-Najm (The Star): Verse 21

(21) أَلَكُمُ الذَّكَرُ وَلَهُ الْإِنَاثُ (Is it for you the males, and for Him the females?)

We have previously discussed what needed to be mentioned concerning this topic in Surah At-Tur in the verse: {Or has He daughters, while you have sons?} (At-Tur: 39). We will reiterate some of that here, or something close to it.

When the pagans mentioned Al-Lāt, Al-‘Uzzā, and Manāt, and did not mention anything else, God said: These things you have seen and known—you make them partners with God, even though you have heard of God’s Majesty and Greatness. Even the Angels, despite their high rank and elevation, stop at the Lote Tree (Sidrat al-Muntahā), and the command stops there.

There remains no doubt that these idols are further removed from the realm of reason than they are from the transmitted reports (scripture). It is as if they said: We do not doubt that none of these things are like God (Allah), nor close to resembling Him. Rather, we merely fashioned these things in the likeness of the revered Angels whom the Prophets acknowledged—those who ascend and stand at the Lote Tree, to whom command and prohibition are relayed, and who report back to God what issues from His servants on earth. We claimed these Angels are God’s daughters, so we took forms in the shape of females and gave them female names.

• Al-Lāt is the feminization of Al-Laww (or Al-Ilāh). Originally, it should have been Al-Lāhah, but in feminization, the stop occurs, making it Al-Lāhah. One Hā’ was dropped, leaving the word with two original letters plus the feminine Tā’, which was treated as if it were original, similar to what was done with Dhāt Māl (possessor of wealth) and Dhā Māl.
• Al-‘Uzzā is the feminization of Al-A‘azz (the Mightier).

So, God asks them: How have you assigned daughters to God when you yourselves admit that females are deficient and males are complete? God is complete in His Greatness, so how could what is attributed to Him be deficient? You yourselves are at the utmost limit of baseness and humiliation, as you have placed yourselves lower than a wine-seller (khammār) or a slave, then lower than a rock or a tree, yet you attribute the complete one (the male) to yourselves!

This division (males for yourselves, females for God) is permissible according to your own logic as well: You have debased yourselves and attributed the greatest of the two weighty things (males) to yourselves, while you detested females and attributed them to the Greatest (God). According to your custom, you should assign the greater thing to the greater being and the lesser thing to the lowly being. Therefore, you have contradicted thought, reason, and your own established custom.

{تِلْكَ إِذًا قِسْمَةٌ ضِيزَى}

(That, then, is an unfair division.)