that Allah, exalted be He, has left the degree to which He will punish those people to His own Will. ʿAbd Allah (1) narrated to us; Muʿāwiyah (2) narrated to us, from ʿAlī (3), from Ibn ʿAbbās, who said:

“The Fire shall be your dwelling; you will remain therein forever” (4).

Commenting on this verse he said,

“It is not fitting for anyone to pass judgment on Allah regarding His creation, or to consign them definitively to either the Garden or the Fire” (5).

The threat contained in this verse is not limited to the People of the Qiblah (Ahl al-Qiblah) (6), for He, Most High, also says:

“On the Day when He gathers them all together He will say, ‘Company of jinn, you have taken many of humankind.’ Their human companions will say, ‘Our Lord, we benefited from one another, and we have now reached the term You appointed for us.’ He will say, ‘The Fire is your abode, wherein you shall abide forever—except as Allah wills. Surely your Lord is All-Wise, All-Knowing. And thus We make the wrongdoers allies of one another because of what they used to earn’” (7).

The phrase “their human companions” (8) unquestionably includes the unbelievers, for they are more deserving of such companionship than the disobedient Muslims.