he would have remained inside it until the Day they are resurrected (37:143–144).

Likewise, the people of Paradise will say there: “We used to live among our families in fear; then Allah was gracious to us and shielded us from the punishment of the scorching wind. We used to call upon Him before—indeed, He alone is the Most Kind, the Most Merciful” (52:26-28).

• Allah has appointed many causes for opening the breast, delighting it, and bringing it tranquillity: firm certainty, true faith, abundant remembrance of Allah, strong turning to Him in repentance, contentment with the provision one has been given, the acquisition of beneficial knowledge, abandoning sins, and hastening to repent from whatever of them has occurred. The evidences for this are numerous, among them His words: “Those who believe and whose hearts find rest in the remembrance of Allah—surely, in the remembrance of Allah hearts do find rest” (13:28); “Is one whose breast Allah has opened for Islam, so that he is upon a light from his Lord…?” (39:22); “Indeed the righteous will be in bliss” (82:13)—a bliss that clearly includes the happiness of hearts in this life; “Whoever, male or female, does righteous deeds while he is a believer, We shall grant him a goodly life, and We shall reward them according to the best of what they used to do” (16:97); “No indeed! The stain of what they used to earn has covered their hearts. No indeed! On that Day they will surely be veiled from their Lord” (83:14-15).

• Allah has likewise made the striking of parables in His Book one of the greatest avenues of instruction, by which lofty aims, and sound and unsound beliefs, are clarified and made manifest:
– He likened the word of tawḥīd—the true and sound creed—to “a goodly tree: its root firmly fixed” in the heart of the believer, “and its branches” of deeds and character “reaching to the sky; it yields its fruit”—its benefits—“at every season by its Lord’s permission” (14:24-25).
– He contrasted this with the vile tree that possesses neither a firm root nor a beneficial branch.
– He likened the idolater with respect to his Lord to a slave whom quarrelsome partners are pulling in different directions, whereas the sincere monotheist who devotes himself exclusively to Allah is free from attachment to anything besides Him.