“Can one whose heart Allah has opened to Islam, so that he follows a light from his Lord, be compared with the hard-hearted? Woe to those whose hearts are hardened against the remembrance of Allah. They are clearly astray.” (22)

His saying, exalted is He: “Do you not see that Allah sends down water from the sky and channels it as springs in the earth?” That is, He causes that water to enter the earth as springs—springs and wells. (1) Al-Sha‘bi said: “Every body of water in the earth has come down from the sky.” “Then by it,” that is, by the water, “He brings forth crops of diverse colours”—red, yellow, and green. “Then they wither,” that is, they dry up, “and you see them,” after their greenness and freshness, “turn yellow; then He makes them into debris,” broken fragments. “Surely in that is a reminder for people of understanding.”

His saying, exalted is He: “Can one whose heart Allah has opened to Islam”—that is, made spacious for accepting the truth—“so that he follows a light from his Lord,” is not like one whose heart Allah has made hard.

Abu Sa‘id Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Shurayhi informed us; Abu Ishaq Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Tha‘labi informed us; Ibn Fanjawayh informed us; Abd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn Shaybah narrated to us; Abu Ja‘far Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ibn Yazid al-Mawsili, in Baghdad, narrated to us; Abu Farwah—whose name was Yazid ibn Muhammad—narrated to us; my father narrated to me from his father; Zayd ibn Abi Unaysah narrated to us from ‘Amr ibn Murrah, from Abd Allah ibn al-Harith, from Abd Allah ibn Mas‘ud, who said: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, recited: “Can one whose heart Allah has opened to Islam, so that he follows a light from his Lord?” We said, “O Messenger of Allah, how is one’s heart opened?”