Page 18 - Those Who Do Not Heed The Qur'an

16 THOSE WHO DO NOT HEED THE QUR'AN

After this dialogue, they tried to kill the Prophet Ibrahim and
cast him into the fire. Allah thwarted them by protecting the Prophet
Ibrahim from the fire. This encounter, between the Prophet and his
tribe, is a good demonstration of the problem we have been dis-
cussing: a people's illogical attachment to their ancestral religion,
even in the face of rational proofs and evidence to the contrary.

However, on the Day of Judgment people will face Allah com-
pletely alone, and their ancestors, on whom they placed so much
importance and whose paths they followed, will not save them from
Allah's reckoning. The Qur'an describes their repentance and sor-
row:
They will say on the Day their faces are rolled over in the Fire,
"If only we had obeyed Allah and obeyed the Messenger!" And
they will say, "Our Lord, we obeyed our masters and great men
and they misguided us from the Way. Our Lord, give them dou-
ble the punishment and curse them many times over!" (Surat
al-Azhab: 66-68)

Excessive Attachment to the Life of This World

Many people make the mistake of thinking that this life will
never end; they become excessively attached to life and forget how
short it really is. This heedlessness leads people to avoid thinking
about the lessons taught in the Qur'an. It does not cross their minds
that everybody will meet the Angel of Death, perhaps unexpectedly,
and that they will be buried beneath the earth.

When the Angel of Death takes someone, that person will not be
able to take with them the worldly goods he or she struggled to ac-
quire throughout in life, nor the relatives and friends they held dear.
On that day, when people come before Allah entirely alone, they will