وَمَنْ أَضَلُّ مِمَّن يَدْعُوا۟ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ مَن لَّا يَسْتَجِيبُ لَهُۥٓ إِلَىٰ يَوْمِ ٱلْقِيَٰمَةِ وَهُمْ عَن دُعَآئِهِمْ غَٰفِلُونَ · وَإِذَا حُشِرَ ٱلنَّاسُ كَانُوا۟ لَهُمْ أَعْدَآءً وَكَانُوا۟ بِعِبَادَتِهِمْ كَٰفِرِينَ
"Who is more astray than one who calls, apart from God, upon that which cannot answer him until the Day of Resurrection? And they are unaware of the calling of these."
| Degree | Expression | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lā yastajību lahū ilā yawmi'l-qiyāma | It cannot answer — with a time limit set: until the Resurrection |
| 2 | Wa hum ʿan duʿāʾihim ghāfilūn | It does not even know of it |
The second degree is heavier than the first, and the order is deliberate: to be unable to answer is a weakness; to be unaware means that the relation was never established at all.
وَإِذَا حُشِرَ ٱلنَّاسُ كَانُوا۟ لَهُمْ أَعْدَآءً — and in the end the relation does not merely break, it turns into its opposite. The same idea occurs in Sūrat Maryam and Sūrat al-Furqān as well; what is to be recorded here is that the sūra begins to work the idea of "the thing you took for a support" on its very first page. In the twenty-sixth verse the same idea will be built not for an idol but for the organs of sense.