“Indeed, We have prepared Hell as a lodging for the disbelievers”—that is, as hospitality and a guest’s fare. What a wretched lodging their lodging is, and what wretched hospitality Hell affords them!
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(103–106) “Say, ‘Shall We inform you of those who are the greatest losers in their deeds? * They are those whose efforts have been wasted in the life of this world, while they think they are doing good. * They are the ones who disbelieved in the signs of their Lord and in meeting Him, so their deeds have come to nothing, and We will assign them no weight on Resurrection Day. * Their recompense is Hell because they disbelieved and made My signs and My messengers objects of ridicule.’”
That is: Say, Muhammad, to the people by way of warning and admonition: Shall I tell you who are, without exception, the greatest losers in their deeds?
“They are those whose efforts have been wasted in the life of this world.” That is, everything they did has proved futile and come to nothing, even though they thought they were doing good. What, then, of the deeds they knew to be false and to constitute defiance of Allah and His messengers and hostility toward them? Who, then, are these people whose deeds are lost and who have therefore “lost themselves and their families on Resurrection Day—truly, that is the manifest loss”?
“They are the ones who disbelieved in the signs of their Lord and in meeting Him.” That is, they denied the Quranic signs and the observable signs, all of which demonstrate the obligation to believe in Him, His angels, His messengers, His scriptures, and the Last Day.
“So their deeds have come to nothing” because of this, “and We will assign them no weight on Resurrection Day.” The purpose of weighing is to set good deeds against evil deeds and determine which outweighs the other. Yet these people have no good deeds because their prerequisite—faith—is absent. Allah Most High says: “But whoever does righteous deeds while being a believer need fear neither injustice nor deprivation.” Their deeds will nevertheless be counted and enumerated; they will be confronted with them and disgraced by them before all assembled, and then punished for them.
Thus He says: “That is their recompense”—namely, that their deeds come to nothing and that “no weight” will be assigned to them on Resurrection Day because of their contemptibility and baseness. This is because they disbelieved in Allah’s signs and made His signs and messengers objects of mockery, deriding and ridiculing them (1), whereas their duty toward Allah’s signs and messengers was to believe in them fully, venerate them, and uphold them in the fullest manner. These people turned the matter upside down, so their own condition was overturned: they fell into ruin and were cast headlong into punishment. Having explained the outcome of the disbelievers and their deeds, He then explained the deeds of the believers and their outcome, saying: