are signs for everyone who is steadfast and grateful.”

“Or He may destroy them for what they have earned, though He pardons much.”

“And those who dispute Our signs will know that they have no escape.”

He thus tells us that, if He wills, He destroys them. His taking them to task for their sins and His pardoning many of those sins are accompanied by the realization among those who dispute His signs that they have no escape. For in such circumstances, the person who raises specious objections against the proofs of the Lord’s lordship, power, will, and mercy knows that he has no escape from the plight in which he finds himself. This is like His saying in another verse:

“Yet they dispute about Allah, while He is mighty in retribution.”

Knowledge that arises in the soul through compelling circumstances is firmer and more deeply rooted than knowledge produced by mere syllogistic reasoning—which vanishes from people’s minds in such circumstances: Is the Lord a cause whose effects follow necessarily from His essence, so that He does not Himself originate events and cannot bring anything into being or change the world, such that He could be invoked and petitioned? Does He know things both in detail and in general, and have the power to alter circumstances, so that He may be asked to bring about a change from one state to another? Or is He not so, as certain philosophizers and other misguided people claim?

Thus, alongside punishment and pardon from the Possessor of Majesty, those given to disputation and argument come to know that they have no escape from what He has inflicted upon those who disputed His signs, for He is mighty in retribution. We have discussed this and similar matters elsewhere, together with the doctrines and religious beliefs connected with them. The point here is to recognize that supplication and petition are a means of attaining what is sought and requested