فَمَا كَانَ جَوَابَ قَوْمِهِۦٓ إِلَّآ أَن قَالُوا۟ ٱقْتُلُوهُ أَوْ حَرِّقُوهُ … وَقَالَ إِنَّمَا ٱتَّخَذْتُم مِّن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ أَوْثَٰنًا مَّوَدَّةَ بَيْنِكُمْ فِى ٱلْحَيَوٰةِ ٱلدُّنْيَا
"The answer of his people was only this: 'Kill him, or burn him!'… Abraham said: 'You have taken idols apart from God only as a bond of affection among yourselves in the life of this world.'"
Abraham's sentence diagnoses the worship of idols not as a matter of belief but as a matter of bond.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sentence itself: the verse names the social function of shared worship — a belonging that binds people to one another. And the continuation of the sentence gives the term of that bond: fi'l-ḥayāti'd-dunyā — here only.
Indeed the next sentence announces what will become of the bond: thumma yawma'l-qiyāmati yakfuru baʿḍukum bi-baʿḍin wa yalʿanu baʿḍukum baʿḍā — rejecting and cursing one another.
The same reversal was treated at al-Aḥqāf 46/6 and al-Zukhruf 43/67 (al-akhillāʾu yawmaʾidhin baʿḍuhum li-baʿḍin ʿaduww). Three sūras recount the same reversal.
ٱقْتُلُوهُ أَوْ حَرِّقُوهُ — and the answer of the people must be recorded: not a proof, but two methods of execution.
Pharaoh's taking the same course was treated at Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) 40/26 (dharūnī aqtul Mūsā) and it was recorded there: what is done where no answer can be given in words. I rely on that treatment.