and their grandees.

Allah likens this worldly life, its glitter, and the delusion it inspires to the blossom of spring: it delights the onlookers, beguiles the ignorant, and they imagine it will endure, feeling no apprehension about its fading away. So they indulge in it, forgetting the purpose for which they were created. Then it slips from their hands and they part from its comforts in the quickest of moments—just as the spring meadow, lush and green at dawn, becomes dry stubble by evening, its once-vibrant life reduced to withered remains.

This portrayal is one that all people—righteous and wicked alike—have witnessed and acknowledged; yet the intoxication of desires and the weakness of faith’s impulse lead them to prefer the immediate over the everlasting.