and Hud rebuked them, saying, “Do you build on every hill a monument merely for pastime, 128 and set up fortresses as though you would live forever?” 129 (Q 26:128–129).

In short, the construction of palaces, fortresses, houses, and other buildings falls into three categories:
• They may be built as dwellings that people genuinely need, and those needs vary from one circumstance to another. This is permissible, and with a righteous intention it can become a means to goodness.
• They may serve as defensive citadels that repel the harm of enemies, safeguard the frontiers, protect the land, and otherwise benefit the Muslims and shield them from evil. This form comes under jihad in the path of Allah and the divine injunction to take precautions against one’s foes.
• Or they may be raised for vanity and boastfulness, to dominate Allah’s servants, and to squander wealth that ought to be spent on beneficial avenues. This is the censured type that Allah condemned in ʿĀd and other communities.

Another takeaway is that intellect, mental acuity, cleverness, material power, and the impressive results they yield—no matter how great—are of no use unless they are coupled with faith in Allah and His messengers. Whoever denies Allah’s signs and belies His messengers may be granted respite in this life, but his ultimate end is disastrous. His hearing, sight, and intellect will avail him nothing when Allah’s decree arrives, as Allah said about ʿĀd: “We had established them in ways We have not established you, and We endowed them with hearing, sight, and hearts; yet their hearing, sight, and hearts were of no benefit to them at all, for they used to reject Allah’s signs, and what they used to ridicule engulfed them.” 26 (Q 46:26)

In another verse He says: “Their gods, whom they invoked instead of Allah, availed them nothing when your Lord’s command came; they only increased their ruin.” (Q 11:101)