An-Naml 68: “Vowingly, this (warning) has been promised to us and our forefathers from before. This is nothing but a tale of the previous ones.”

Surah An-Naml, verse 68. "I swear" — Allah Almighty swears by His own being — "I swear that this threat, just as it was made to us, was made before to our forefathers too. This is nothing but the tales of the ancients," it says. Who is this? Non-Muslims, that is, idolaters, they swear: I swear.

I swear that this threat, as it was made to us — that is, prophets, who are you? — was made to our forefathers long ago too. It was made before to our forefathers too. this is nothing but the tales of the ancients, it says. Yes. You see, they were threatened, they died and were gone, we too will die and be gone. Who are you, they say to the prophets. Have you no sense, they say, by their own reckoning. This is a threat (?). Are you going to frighten us (?), they say. When the Prophet (peace be upon him) invited people to the truth, the deniers said this: I swear. That is, I swear, this threat made to us, the threat of resurrection after death and of being called to account before Allah, was made before to our forefathers too. It is nothing but this tale told before to our forefathers and then to us, they said.

A tale. There's no thinking, you see. A person who believes what his eyes see. Yet their forefathers too were warned of Allah's wrath, and have they not heard what became of them in the end? Surely they have heard. Did the prophets not warn them? They did. And were they not destroyed? They were. Did they not hear of them? They heard that too. But once a person has given his covenant in the beginning as a rebel against Allah Almighty... Allah Almighty says this to them in His verse: Although only a short time has passed over the peoples you destroyed, how they have come to resemble their forefathers, it says.

Because the character is the same, the covenant the same, the (?) wishes the same. Of course he too is a traveller on that path; so it will be.

Since people are short-sighted and given to the desires of the nafs, they are inclined to sin and to not listening to Allah's commands. In this respect, they too know very well that, as a result of the truths they call tales of the ancients, many peoples who did not listen to these tales were destroyed. But just as snow falls and covers the tracks, so too the deniers, not learning from the past, regard the destruction of the destroyed peoples, over time, not as Allah's doing but as a work of nature (?), persuading their own nafs of it, because they want to carry on with this filth of theirs.

That is why, although the Prophet (peace be upon him) entrusted the truth to these deniers, these people knowingly denied Allah and the Prophet and said: these are the tales of the ancients.