Tafsir of As-Saffat 37:149-157

{فاستفتهم}: This is conjoined to its equivalent at the beginning of the Surah, despite the distance between them. He commanded His Messenger to first ask the Quraysh about their denial of the Resurrection. Then, he continued the discourse, connecting one part to another, and commanded him to ask them about the nature of the "unjust division" they made—where they assigned the females to Allah and the males to themselves by saying, "The angels are the daughters of Allah," despite their intense hatred for daughters, their practice of female infanticide, and their disdain for even mentioning them.

In doing so, they committed three types of disbelief:

1. Anthropomorphism (Tajsim): Because procreation is specific to physical bodies.
2. Preferring themselves over their Lord: By assigning the lower of the two genders to Him and the higher to themselves, as He said: “And when one of them is given good tidings of that which he attributes to the Most Merciful as a comparison, his face becomes darkened, and he is suppressed with grief” (Az-Zukhruf: 17), and “So is one brought up in ornaments while being during conflict unevident?” (Az-Zukhruf: 18).
3. Disrespecting the most honored of Allah’s creation: Those closest to Him, by feminizing them. If one were to say to the lowest among them, "You have femininity" or "Your appearance is like that of women," he would put on the skin of a leopard (i.e., become enraged) and his eyes would roll in fury. This is evident in their satires.

Allah, the Exalted, repeated all these types in His Book multiple times to demonstrate their atrocity in verses such as: “And they say, ‘The Most Merciful has taken a son.’ You have done an atrocious thing” (Maryam: 88-89), and many others (e.g., Al-Anbiya: 26, Al-Baqarah: 116, Al-An'am: 101, As-Saffat: 151-152, Az-Zukhruf: 15, An-Nahl: 57, At-Tur: 39, An-Nahl: 62, As-Saffat: 153, Az-Zukhruf: 16, 19).

{أَمْ خَلَقْنَا الْمَلَائِكَةَ إِنَاثًا وَهُمْ شَاهِدُونَ} If you ask: Why did He say, “and they are witnesses,” specifying the knowledge of witnessing? I say: It is a form of mockery and an accusation of ignorance against them. Similarly, His saying: “Did they witness their creation?” (Az-Zukhruf: 19). It means that just as they did not know this through witnessing, they did not know it through Allah creating knowledge of it in their hearts, nor through a truthful report, nor through deduction and reasoning. It is also possible the meaning is that they say this with the confidence of one whose heart is at ease due to their extreme ignorance, as if they had actually witnessed their creation.

{أَصْطَفَى الْبَنَاتِ عَلَى الْبَنِينَ} If you ask: {أَصْطَفَى} (As-tafa) with a Fatha on the Hamza is an interrogative of denial and improbability, then how is the recitation of Abu Ja'far with a Kasra on the Hamza (Istafa) valid as an affirmation? I say: He made it part of the speech of the disbelievers, replacing their saying: “Allah has begotten.” This was recited by Hamza and Al-A'mash. Although this is the interpretation, the recitation is weak because denial surrounds this sentence from both sides: “And indeed, they are liars” and “How do you judge?” Whoever makes it an affirmation places it as an intruder between two related statements.

{أَمْ لَكُمْ سُلْطَانٌ} Meaning: Do you have an authority—a proof sent down from heaven—that the angels are the daughters of Allah? {فَأْتُوا بِكِتَابِكُمْ} which was sent down to you regarding this. These verses emanate from great indignation, severe denial, and extreme rejection of their claims. The styles in which they were revealed are nothing but a declaration of the foolishness of the Quraysh, the ignorance of their souls, and the weakness of their intellects, combined with mockery, sarcasm, and astonishment that such a thing could even cross one's mind or be spoken of, let alone be held as a belief or adopted as a doctrine.

{وَجَعَلُوا بَيْنَهُ وَبَيْنَ الْجِنَّةِ نَسَبًا وَلَقَدْ عَلِمَتِ الْجِنَّةُ إِنَّهُمْ لَمُحْضَرُونَ * سُبْحَانَ اللَّهِ عَمَّا يَصِفُونَ * إِلَّا عِبَادَ اللَّهِ الْمُخْلَصِينَ}