The Criterion
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE[25:17]
BUT [as for people who are oblivious of thy Sustainer’s oneness –] one Day He will gather them together with all that they [now] worship instead of God, and will ask [those to whom divinity was falsely ascribed]: "Was it you who led these My creatures astray, or did they by themselves stray from the right path?"

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* v.17 : This passage connects elliptically with verse 3 above.
* The rhetorical “question” which follows is obviously addressed to wrongfully deified rational beings – i.e., prophets or saints – and not, as some commentators assume, to lifeless idols which, as it were, “will be made to speak.”