(4–6) “None disputes Allah’s signs except those who disbelieve, so do not be deceived by their movement throughout the lands. * Before them, the people of Noah denied the truth, as did the confederates after them. Every nation plotted against its messenger to seize him, and they disputed with falsehood in order to refute the truth with it. So I seized them—and how terrible was My punishment! * Thus your Lord’s word has come into effect against those who disbelieve: they are the inhabitants of the Fire.”
The Exalted informs us that none disputes His signs except those who disbelieve. What is meant here by disputation is arguing in order to reject Allah’s signs and oppose them with falsehood. This is the practice of the disbelievers. The believers, by contrast, submit to Allah Most High, who casts the truth against falsehood and thereby vanquishes it.
A person should not be deceived by another’s worldly circumstances, imagining that Allah’s granting him worldly prosperity proves that He loves him, that he is upon the truth. Thus He said: “So do not be deceived by their movement throughout the lands” ⦗732⦘—that is, their movement through them in pursuit of various kinds of trade and gain. Rather, a servant must judge people by the truth, examine the realities established by the revealed law, and weigh people by them. He must not weigh the truth by people, as do those who possess neither knowledge nor reason.
He then threatened those who dispute Allah’s signs in order to invalidate them, just as earlier nations had done—the people of Noah, ʿĀd, and the confederates after them—who formed factions and rallied against the truth to invalidate it and around falsehood to support it. Matters went so far with them, and their factionalism ultimately led them to such a point, that “every nation plotted against its messenger to seize him”—that is, to kill him. This is the utmost extreme: they plotted to kill the messengers, the leaders of the people of goodness, who brought the unadulterated truth in which there is neither doubt nor ambiguity. After such transgression, misguidance, and wretchedness, could there be anything but a tremendous punishment from which they would never escape?
Thus He said concerning their punishment in this world and the Hereafter: “So I seized them”—because of their denial and their forming factions—“and how terrible was My punishment!” It was the severest and most dreadful punishment: nothing more than a blast, or a shower of stones descending upon them, or His commanding the earth to swallow them or the sea to drown them—and suddenly they lay lifeless.
“Thus your Lord’s word has come into effect against those who disbelieve”—that is, just as it came into effect against those earlier peoples, so too the word decreeing misguidance came into effect against them, from which followed the word decreeing punishment. Thus He said: “They are the inhabitants of the Fire.”