—one who rejects the truth. Accordingly, people’s misguidance falls into two categories:

1. A wandering, uninformed misguidance: they simply do not know the truth. The Christians are an example; they were astray—lost and unaware of the truth—until the Prophet ﷺ was sent. After his mission they came to recognize the truth, yet out of arrogance they refused it, leaving them no different from the Jews, who likewise knew the truth but would not follow it.

2. A willful, chosen deviance: after recognizing right guidance they preferred error. This is typified by the Jews; they were acquainted with the truth yet did not accept it, indeed they rejected it outright.

Allah the Exalted says: “As for Thamud, We showed them the way, but they preferred blindness to guidance” (Fussilat 17). Allah guided them, clarified the matter, and pointed it out, yet they chose blindness over guidance and error over rectitude. Thus all people are astray except those whom Allah guides.

But what is the guidance granted to the first category—the one that does not know the truth? It is that Allah makes the truth clear to them and directs them to it. This form of guidance is a duty that Allah has bound Himself to perform; every creature has received it in this sense of clarification. Allah says, “Indeed, upon Us is [to show] the guidance” (al-Layl 12), and He says, “The month of Ramadan in which the Quran was sent down, a guidance for humankind” (al-Baqarah 185)—a guidance for all people in general.

The second kind is the guidance of divine enablement, leading one to accept the truth; this Allah bestows exclusively upon whomever He wills among His servants. Guidance, then, is of two kinds: the guidance that clarifies the truth—universal and self-imposed by Allah—and He has made the truth clear to His servants.