Al Ḥijr

وإِنَّهَا لَبِسَبِيلٍ مُّقِيمٍ

إِنَّ فِي ذَلِكَ لاَيَةً لّـِلْمُؤْمِنِينَ

76. “And verily it is on a way (yet) remaining.”
77. “Verily, in this there is a sign for the believers.”

The preservation of the monuments and relics of the past provide instructive lessons for the future generations. Therefore, He implies in this noble verse: Do not presume that all their relics have been vanished. It is not so. Their relics and monuments have remained constant and fixed on the roads for caravans and those who pass over there. As the city of Lot is located on the people’s path and when they pass by them for meeting their daily needs, they draw lessons from them. For, the relics, which become focus of attention of the people there, are always constant, fixed and sustaining.

The verse says:

“And verily it is on a way (yet) remaining.”

This city is called ‘Sudūm’. Qatt adah says: The villages of the people of Lot are situated between Medina and Sham (Damascus). As the author of Tafsir-i-Atyab-ul-Bayan says: Perhaps, the meaning of the above verse is that the Divine outrage is not confined to the people of Lot only; rather, it is the method and the tradition which is constant and holds true for all the criminals of the history. It is also a warning for all those who commit such heinous and hideous acts that the people of Lot used to do.

Some Islamic traditions denote that he who commits the act committed by the people of Lot, will be suffering from the utmost punishment at the time when his soul is being taken out of his body. Further, some quotations indicate that this act has been rendered into the disbelief in Allah and the punishment of which is ‘execution’. As a further emphasis, and in order to call the faithful to meditate more over this instructive story, the Qur’an implies that there is a sign in this story for those who are believers, as the true believers are always full of insight and are quite intelligent.

The verse says:

“Verily, in this there is a sign for the believers.”

How may one be a believer and yet reads this shaking biography and still does not draw instructive lessons from it?