Page 82 - The Struggle of the Messengers

80 The Struggle of the Messengers

The Messengers' Struggle against Immorality

A Messenger's chief duty is to call his people to Allah's way
and explain His religion to them. The groups he struggles with
respond to his call with hostility and try to stop him from
delivering his message. He also tries to intellectually destroy the
influence of those groups that want to lead people astray and
prevent them from following His way: "They keep others from it
and avoid it themselves..." (Surat al-An'am, 26). For example,
those who work to promote immoral conduct and indecency want
to draw others into the same perversions in which they indulge:

People who love to see immorality being spread among those
who believe will have a painful punishment both in this world
and the hereafter. Allah knows and you do not know. (Surat
an-Nur, 19)
Those who work to spread immorality will experience the
pangs of hell in the hereafter. They may experience different
pangs in this world, and Allah may give them different troubles.
The example of the Prophet Lot (as) and his people shows how the
Messengers struggle against immorality. It records the Prophet
Lot's (as) warning to homosexuals and his immoral people's
response to him:

And Lot, when he said to his people: "Do you commit an
obscenity not perpetrated before you by anyone in all the
worlds? You come with lust to men instead of women. You are
indeed a depraved people." The only answer of his people was
to say: "Expel them from your city! They are people who keep
themselves pure!" (Surat al-A'raf, 80-82)
In another verse we are informed of the Prophet Lot's (as)
response to his people: