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 adopt, 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 shariah that they had to follow faithfully. This is a complete code of life which the inventors invented against the legislation of Allah, 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 (Surah An-Nisa, Ayat 60); (Surah Al-Maidah, Ayat 87); (Surah Al-Anaam, Ayats 121, 136,137); (Surah At-Taubah, Ayat 31); (Surah Younus, Ayat 59); (Surah Ibrahim, Ayat 22); (Surah An-Nahl, Ayats 115- 116); (Surah Al-Kahf, Ayat 52); (Surah Al-Qasas, Ayats 62-64); (Surah Saba, Ayat 41); (Surah YaSeen, Ayat 74 and the relevant E.N.s).
39. That is, this is such a boldness against Allah that had not judgment been deferred till Resurrection, the torment would have been sent down on every such person, who in spite of being Allah’s 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.