Ash-Shu'ara 104: And verily, your Lord is Azeez (Exalted) and Raheem (the One Who very generously accepts repentance).

I answer your questions. Verse 104 of Surah Ash-Shu'ara: Surely your Lord — here He puts a comma — your Lord, it is He. That is, here His own Being He emphasizes strongly. Surely your Lord — who is that? It is He. That is, He stresses that there is no other god but Him. He is the absolute Owner of the worlds, the absolutely prevailing, the possessor of vast mercy, He says. Now what does this "absolutely prevailing" mean?

Whatever He has created, from the atom to the globe, the seven heavens, the living beings in this universe, the creatures He created beyond what our minds and comprehension can grasp — we are all creatures. All created things are creatures. Most certainly, Allah Almighty has not created anything His power cannot reach. Everything is within the power of Allah Almighty. For example, we make a robot. A robot. Each one's program is separate. Programmed. But in those robots there is such a program that when you press a button, it silences them all.

Allah Almighty too has programmed all the signals of these creatures of His to Himself. He stops whatever He wants, whenever He wants. He annihilates whatever He wants, whenever He wants. Because our Lord, so that His rule over all these living beings He created would prevail, created no being outside His rule, He says "absolutely prevailing." And He says He is the possessor of vast mercy. Allah, who as the Creator Lord brings into being from nothing, does not will injustice for His creatures. Since He created His creatures as knowers of His Being, that is, since all created beings know that they were created by Allah, then, so as not to create a being equal to His Being, He created them deficient.

For example, human beings. What does He say? If We had created humans free of error, We would destroy them and in their place create servants who commit errors, He says. The meaning in this: although Allah Almighty created His creatures in weakness and gave them a mind able to know crooked and straight, it is not a mind that knows everything correctly. Some things they know as true are superstitions. When superstition and truth come together, that mind has the ability to tell the superstition apart. So in this case, because people think they are doing right with their own minds, they can commit errors.

So that here he realizes he has erred and says, "I have committed an offense against my Lord," sees his Lord in His sublimity and knows himself in his lowliness and asks his Lord for forgiveness, He created him with a deficient mind. He created nothing equal to His Being. In this case, since Allah Almighty created these beings this way, these created creatures know their deficiency and turn to Allah, and so the Prophet, in a hadith corresponding to this verse, symbolizes (?) it like this. Even if your sins reached the clouds in the sky, when you repent with an intense (?), Allah Almighty turns those bad deeds of yours into good deeds, he says.

That is the possessor of vast mercy. As long as you (?). Yes.

So Allah Almighty is absolutely prevailing. No created being can harm Allah. And on that Day of Reckoning, as the absolute Judge, He will call all His creatures to account in return for what they did. They will be sent to the places they deserve. This is the ruling of Allah, the absolutely prevailing, and the command of Allah, who has power over all things. Moreover, Allah is the possessor of vast mercy. In His sight, of those who return to their Lord, for the sins they committed in their time of ignorance asking pardon and forgiveness, there is no one whose sin is not forgiven. With the sins he committed in his time of ignorance, what will he say?

O my great Allah, besides whom there is no god, besides whom there is no other door to go to, my Allah, You willed me and created me, but I lived a time of ignorance. I sinned. So as never to return to them again, with a (?) heart, declaring my heart to You, I repent. When you say, "Forgive me," there is no sin Allah Almighty will not forgive. Just turn to Allah like this, from the heart. Yes, but man toward his Lord is very ungrateful, man. He benefits from all the blessings his Lord gives, eats, drinks, lives in pleasure and enjoyment, but for the blessings his Lord gave, not even once does he thank Him, and on top of that he ascribes partners to Him, like atheists, like idolaters, those who hope for help from Allah's creatures.

Those who worship idols that know nothing of them. Those who worship moons, stars, certain creatures. Even though this is so, a person once feels remorse for what he has done. He turns to Allah from the heart. He stays faithful to the promise he gave. If he passes into the Hereafter like this, Allah, out of His vast mercy, grants this person too pardon and forgiveness. So Allah leaves people such an open door, and if a person shuts the doors on himself, we say: what else is Allah to do for a person whose will is in his own hands? What more should He do? Yes. He has given everyone their own will.

Why does He give it? Allah: I will create such a being that I will give him a part of My spirit. I will not interfere with that part at all. As he knows Me by his own will, so I will treat him, He says. However he knows Me, I will treat him accordingly. And if Allah Almighty had wished, could He not have created us as a single community? Had We wished, We would have created a single community, He says. With what? He would have created it under His own rule. He would have programmed us that way. But our own programming He placed in our own hands. As we understood ourselves, that is how we had ourselves programmed.

So why did Allah Almighty do it like this? A word has gone forth from Me. Paradise and Hell, He says. I will leave you free in your own will. If you know Me as Lord, Paradise is yours; if you deny Me, your place is the fire of Hell, He says. Yes.