For this reason, had he possessed the power to grant such guidance, he would have guided his uncle Abu Talib, whose kindness had reached him and who had supported him and protected him from his people. Yet he showed his uncle even greater kindness than his uncle had shown him, by calling him to the faith and offering him the fullest sincere counsel. Guidance, however, rests in the hand of Allah Most High.
⦗621⦘
(57–59) “They say, ‘If we follow the guidance with you, we shall be snatched away from our land.’ Have We not established for them a secure sanctuary to which fruits of every kind are brought as provision from Us? Yet most of them do not know. How many a town We destroyed that exulted in its prosperity! Those are their dwellings, scarcely inhabited after them. And We alone are the inheritors. Your Lord would never destroy towns until He had sent a messenger to their principal city, reciting Our verses to them. Nor would We destroy towns unless their people were wrongdoers.”
Allah Most High informs us that the deniers among Quraysh and the people of Mecca said to the Messenger—peace and blessings be upon him—“If we follow the guidance with you, we shall be snatched away from our land,” by being killed or captured and having our wealth plundered. They argued: “The people have become hostile to you and opposed you. If we were to follow you, we would expose ourselves to the hostility of everyone, and we would have no power to withstand them.”
These words reveal their evil opinion of Allah Most High: they assumed that He would not support His religion or exalt His word, but would instead give people power over the followers of His religion, allowing them to subject them to terrible torment. They imagined that falsehood would prevail over the truth.
Allah explained to them the exceptional condition that He had granted them alone, saying: “Have We not established for them a secure sanctuary to which fruits of every kind are brought as provision from Us?” That is: Have We not made them firmly established [securely settled] within a sanctuary frequented by travelers and sought out by visitors, whose inviolability is respected by those near and far? Its inhabitants are neither attacked nor made to suffer even the slightest loss [or any great loss].
Meanwhile, every place around them was beset by fear on every side, and its inhabitants enjoyed neither security nor peace of mind. Let them therefore praise their Lord for this complete security, which none but they enjoy, and for the abundant provision that reaches them from every place—fruits, foods, and merchandise—by which they sustain themselves and live in comfort. Let them follow this noble Messenger so that their security and prosperity may be made complete.
They must beware of rejecting him and responding to Allah’s blessing with insolent ingratitude, lest they exchange their security for fear, their honor for humiliation, and their wealth for poverty. He therefore warned them by citing what He had done to the nations before them, saying:
“How many a town We destroyed that exulted in its prosperity!” That is, its people took pride in their prosperity, were distracted by it, and became preoccupied with it instead of believing in the messengers. Allah therefore destroyed them, stripped them of the blessing, and brought punishment upon them. “Those are their dwellings, scarcely inhabited after them,” because destruction and ruin repeatedly befell their inhabitants, leaving the dwellings desolate after they were gone.
“And We alone are the inheritors” of the servants: We cause them to die, whereupon all the blessings We allowed them to enjoy return to Us. Then We bring them back (1) to Us and recompense them for their deeds.
One aspect of His wisdom and mercy is that He does not punish nations merely for their unbelief before the proof has been established against them by sending messengers to them. He therefore said: “Your Lord would never destroy towns”—that is, because of their unbelief and wrongdoing—“until He had sent to their principal city,” meaning the town or city to which they return and whose vicinity they frequent. Everyone around it resorts to it, and news of them is not hidden from the messenger.
“A messenger reciting Our verses to them,” which demonstrate the soundness of what he brought and the truth of that to which he called them. His message thus reaches those far away and those nearby alike. This is unlike sending messengers to distant villages and remote outlying regions, where the message is liable to remain obscure and the people to be coarse. Principal cities, by contrast, are places where the message is likely to become manifest and spread, and their inhabitants are generally less coarse than others.
“Nor would We destroy towns unless their people were wrongdoers” through unbelief and sins and thus deserving of punishment. In sum, Allah punishes no one except because of his wrongdoing and after establishing the proof against him.