Surah 21. Al-Anbiya, Ayah 24

Lit., "produce your evidence", i.e., for the existence of deities other than God, as well as for the intellectual and moral justification of worshipping anything but Him.

See note [24] above.

I.e., the earlier prophets, the purport of whose messages was always the stress on the oneness of God.

In other words, most people's obstinate refusal to consider a reasonable proposition on its merits is often due to no more than the simple fact that it is not familiar to them.

 The Prophet (ﷺ) is ordered to challenge the pagans to produce logical and scriptural proofs for the existence of other gods beside Allah. The verses then argue that if there is more than one god, the different gods would have fought among themselves for domination, and the whole universe would have been ruined. The Quran, the Torah, and the Gospel are all in agreement that there is only One God.

See above. n. 2682, where two kinds of false worship are noted. Now we are warned against a third danger, the worship of false gods of any sort. Pagan man is prolific of creating abstract images for worship, including Self or abstract Intelligence or Power. In verse 26 below is mentioned a fourth kind of false worship, which imagines that Allah begets sons or daughters.

This verse should be read with the next. All reason revolts against the idea of conflicting gods, and points to Unity in Creation and Unity in Godhead. This is not only the Message of Islam ("those with me") but the message of all prophets who came before the holy Prophet Muhammad ("those before me"), and the line of prophets was closed with him. The Message given to every prophet in all ages was that of Unity as the fundamental basis of Order and Design in the world, material, moral, and spiritual.