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This, then, is the ruling concerning the followers and the leaders who shared in the same error. As for those followers who diverge from their leaders—who have veered away from their path while claiming to follow them (1)—they are the people referred to in the Almighty’s words:

“When those who were followed will disown their followers, and they all behold the punishment, and every bond between them will be severed. The followers will say, ‘If only we had another chance, we would disown them just as they have disowned us.’ Thus Allah will show them their deeds as source after source of regret, and they will never emerge from the Fire.” (2) [Q 2:166–167]

Those leaders were upon guidance (3), yet their alleged followers insisted that they were treading their path and method while in fact contradicting them and walking a different road (4). They claimed to love them and imagined that this professed love would benefit them even as they opposed them (5). On the Day of Resurrection, therefore, the leaders will disown them, for these people had taken them as allies in place of Allah and assumed that such allegiance would bring them gain.

Such is the state of anyone who, apart from Allah and His Messenger, adopts an intimate confidant and allies—loving and hating, showing loyalty and enmity, being pleased or angered for their sake. All his deeds are null and void; on the Day of Judgment he will behold them as bitter regrets, no matter how numerous they were or how strenuously he had toiled for them.