(67) “O Messenger, convey what has been sent down to you from your Lord. If you do not, then you will not have conveyed His message. Allah will protect you from the people. Indeed, Allah does not guide the disbelieving people.”

This is Allah’s command to His Messenger Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) concerning the greatest and most sublime of obligations: conveying what Allah had revealed to him. This includes everything that the Muslim community received from him (peace and blessings be upon him), whether beliefs, deeds, words, religious rulings, or divine requirements. He (peace and blessings be upon him) conveyed it in the most complete manner: he called and warned, gave glad tidings and made matters easy, and taught the ignorant and unlettered until they became godly scholars. He conveyed the message through his words, deeds, writings, and envoys. There was no good to which he did not direct his community, and no evil against which he did not warn them. The most eminent members of the community—the Companions, followed by the imams of the religion and leading Muslims—testified that he had conveyed the message.

“If you do not”—that is, if you do not convey what has been sent down to you from your Lord—“then you will not have conveyed His message”; that is, you will not have fulfilled His command.

“Allah will protect you from the people.” This is Allah’s guarantee that He would safeguard and protect His Messenger from the people. Your chief concern should therefore be teaching and conveying the message, and fear of created beings should not deter you from it, for their forelocks are in Allah’s hand, and He has guaranteed your protection. Your duty is only to convey the message clearly. Whoever accepts guidance does so for his own benefit. As for the disbelievers, whose only aim is to follow their desires, Allah neither guides them nor grants them success in attaining good because of their disbelief.