Surah al-A`raf (The Elevated Places) 7 : 192

Explanatory Note

The Arabic text uses the plural form that refers only to a group which includes human beings. This suggests that there are some human beings who are considered or treated as gods. It has never been suggested that, in their pagan days, the Arabs used to have human deities whom they treated as gods or to whom they offered worship. They only gave them the position of deities in the sense that they accepted the social laws they had enacted for them and accepted their arbitration in their own quarrels, which meant that they gave them the status of Godhead. The Qur’ān refers to all this as associating partners with God. It equates it with idolatry that offers worship to statues and idols. Indeed, Islam treats both forms of paganism in the same way, just as the Qur’ān considers those who accepted the laws and verdicts given to them by rabbis and priests as polytheists, associating partners with God. They definitely did not believe that those rabbis and priests were gods or deities, and they did not offer any act of worship to them. Nevertheless, all such attitudes deviate from the concept of God’s oneness, which is the cornerstone of the divine faith. That concept takes its clearest form in the declaration that “there is no deity other than God.” This endorses what we have already stated, that the new forms of jāhiliyyah are just as idolatrous as its old form.