Surah 39. Az-Zumar, Ayah 32

In this instance, the "inventing of lies about God" alludes to the attribution of a share in His divinity to anyone or anything beside Him, whether it be a belief in a plurality of deities, or in an imaginary "incarnation" of God in human form, or in saints allegedly endowed with semi-divine powers.

Lit., "Is not in hell an abode ...", etc.: a rhetorical question indicating, firstly, that otherworldly suffering is the unavoidable destiny - symbolically, "an abode" - of all such sinners and, secondly, that in the concept and picture of "hell" we are given an allegory of that self-caused suffering.

When the creature deliberately adopts and utters falsehoods against his own Creator, in spite of the Truth being brought, as it were, to his very door by Allah's Signs, what offence can we imagine more heinous than this? In Christian theology this is the blasphemy "against the Holy Ghost" spoken of in Matt. xii. 31-32: "whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man", (Christ), "it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come".

Cf. iii. 151; xvi. 29.