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wa-rabbuka l-ghafūru dhū r-raḥmati law yuʾākhidhuhum bi-mā kasabū la-ʿajjala lahumu l-ʿadhāba bal lahum mawʿidun lan yajidū min dūnihī mawʾilan
Your Lord is the All-forgiving dispenser of mercy. Were He to take them to task because of what they have committed, He would have surely hastened their punishment. But they have a tryst, [when] they will not find a refuge besides Him.
— Ali Quli Qarai
Surah Al-Kahf – Verses 58 - 59
58. “And your Lord is Forgiving, the Lord of Mercy. Were He to seize them (to task) for what they earn, surely He would hasten for them the chastisement; but for them is an appointed term, never shall they find, besides it, a refuge.”
59.”And (as for the people of) these towns, We destroyed them when they did wrong and We appointed a time for their destruction.
The Qur’anic term /mu’il/ means: ‘a refuge, and a means of safety’. Allah (s.w.t.) is both just and All-Forgiving. His justice requires that the sinners must be punished, but, because of His Forgiveness, He respites man to repent. Then if he does not repent, He will treat him with His justice. Thus; the manner of Allah (s.w.t.) in training men is that He respites them up to the last stage and, unlike to the arrogant people of the world, He never punishes them promptly, but His All-embracing Mercy always requires that He gives the evil-doers the maximum respite.
In this verse, the Qur’an says:
Allah’s remission necessitates that He forgives the repentant, and His Mercy requires that He does not hasten in the punishment of other than them, maybe they may join the group of repentant ones, while His justice also requires that when their insolence and disobedience reached its last degree, He might clear their account. The verse continues saying:
Then, finally, in the next verse, for the last admonition and warning in these series of verses, the Qur’an has pointed to the bitter and painful fate of the former disobedient transgressors. It implies that these are cities the ruins of which are before their eyes, and when they committed cruelty and inequity, Allah destroyed them, while He did not make haste in their punishment but He (s.w.t.) fixed an appointed time for their destruction. The verse says:
However, the objective meaning of the words ‘these towns’, mentioned in the verse, is the people of the towns of ‘Ad and Thamud, and the like of them, who were destroyed as the result of their rejecting the prophets and their denying the Divine revelations.