The Children of Israel
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE[17:40]
HAS, THEN, your Sustainer distinguished you by [giving you] sons, and taken unto Himself daughters in the guise of angels? Verily, you are uttering a dreadful saying!

---

* v.40 : Lit., “and taken unto Himself, out of the angels, females”: an allusion to the pre-Islamic Arabian belief that the angels – conceived of as a kind of female sub-deities – were God’s “daughters,” and this despite the pagan Arabs’ contempt for female offspring (cf. 16:57-59 and the corresponding notes). In its wider implication, this rhetorical question is meant to bring out the absurdity of the supposition that God’s divinity could be projected into, or shared by, any other being (cf. 6:100-101).