Say: 'Truly I have been forbidden to worship, those besides God whom you worship by your caprice in the way of wealth or soul or lust or corporeal pleasure or otherwise, but no: 'I shall not follow your whims, by worshipping these and then end up astray by being veiled thereby and fail to be guided to the affirmation of Oneness. The significance of the [use of the] past tense [here of the verb qad ḍalaltu] is that my error would have been realised in such a situation and I would be nowhere near guidance.
