be understood as bearing both meanings, because this is more inclusive. If we take it as referring to both situations, the meaning is that when the criminals passed by the believers while the latter were sitting together, the criminals winked at one another; and when the believers passed by the criminals while the latter were sitting together, the criminals likewise winked at one another. Thus, it encompasses both situations: the criminals passing by the believers and the believers passing by the criminals.

“They would wink at one another”—that is, each would wink at the others as if to say, “Look at these people!” in mockery, ridicule, and contempt.

“And when they returned to their families, they returned gleefully.” When the criminals returned to their families, “they returned gleefully,” amusing themselves over how they had mocked these believers. They ridiculed them, derided them, and took pleasure in doing so, imagining that they had succeeded and prevailed over the believers. Yet the reality was exactly the opposite.

Allah then said: “And when they saw them, they said, ‘These people are truly astray.’” “When they saw them”—that is, when the criminals saw the believers—“they said, ‘These people are truly astray’”: astray from what is right, backward, rigid, extreme, and other such labels.

Such predecessors have indeed had successors in our own age, in the ages before it, and in those that will follow it. Some people call the righteous reactionaries and backward, and they call anyone who adheres uprightly to the religion extreme and rigid. Even worse than all this were those who told the Messengers, peace and blessings be upon them, that they were sorcerers or madmen. Allah Most High said: “Likewise, no messenger came to those before them without their saying, ‘A magician or a madman!’” [al-Dhāriyāt: 52].

Thus, the inheritors of the Messengers—the people of knowledge and religion—will suffer at the hands of the Messengers’ enemies the same abusive labels, ridicule, and similar treatment that the Messengers suffered. One example is how the innovators who negate the divine attributes label the early generations who affirmed them as Hashwiyya (ignorant rabble), corporealists, anthropomorphists, and other such abusive names. By these labels, they drive people away from the straight path and justify their own crooked and tortuous way.

“Though they had not been sent as guardians over them”—that is, these criminals had not been sent as guardians over the believers, to watch them and pass judgment upon them. Rather,