The Thunder
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE[13:16]
Say "Who is the Sustainer of the heavens and the earth?"
Say: "[It is] God."
Say: "[Why,] then, do you take for your protectors, instead of Him, such as have it not within their power to bring benefit to, or avert harm from, themselves?"
Say: "Can the blind and the seeing be deemed equal? – or can the depths of darkness and the light be deemed equal?"
Or do they [really] believe that there are, side by side with God, other divine powers that have created the like of what He creates, so that this act of creation appears to them to be similar [to His]?
Say: "God is the Creator of all things; and He is the One who holds absolute sway over all that exists."

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* v.16 : Lit., “do they assign to God partners...,” etc. – i.e., beings that supposedly have a share in God’s divinity and/or His creative power. (See also sūrah 6, note 15.)
* Although the term khalq (“creation” or “act of creation”) is often used metaphorically with reference to human achievements, there is an intrinsic difference between the “creation” of an artist, a poet, or a philosopher, and the act of creation as attributed to God: for whereas the human “creator” produces his work out of already-existing elements and does no more than bring those elements together in a (possibly) new combination, God alone has the power to create in the true sense of the word – that is, to bring into being something that did not exist, either in its entirety or in its components, before this particular act of creation (cf. 2:117-”when He wills a thing to be, He but says unto it, ‘Be’ – and it is”). This is the significance of the allusion, in the above verse, to the erroneous belief that any other power or being could ever have “created the like of what He creates.”