Al-A'raf 86: Do not sit on each path to lead those who believe from Allah’s path, by twisting it and by threat. Know that you were few and Allah has made you larger. See the end of those who commit mischief.

What does it say in verse 86 of Surah Al-A'raf?

Threatening, turning the believers away from Allah's path and wishing to make that path crooked, do not sit like that at every road, it says. They threaten people. They twist the religion. What does it say? Threatening, turning the believers away from Allah's path and wishing to make that path crooked, do not sit like that at every road. Remember that you were few, and He multiplied you. See what the end of the corrupters has been, it says. What does it say? O my people, the believers, it says, those who will turn to Allah: showing this path of Allah as crooked and following Satan by your own minds, do not be in front of your nafs, it says.

See, it says, how the fate of those who opposed Allah turned out. Take a look at them, it says. Them, in warnings, to warnings, to thinking with sound reason he leads. Shu'ayb (peace be upon him), continuing his advice: by threatening people, people do not turn away from Allah's path. The path of guidance, which belongs to Allah's friends, by your own minds, when Allah has sent you no proof at all, do not twist it. That is, do not befriend Satan by disparaging it and striving to make it look bad. These are pushing Allah's limits. Even overstepping them. Yes. Also, do not sit at the head of every road.

That is, trying every road by which to commit every kind of evil to drive people away from Allah's path, do not load people's sins onto your backs as well. Of course. I will turn to Allah, but I have no power, no strength. And you are wealthy, a property owner, powerful and strong. If I turn to Allah, you will kill me. And I am helpless. What do I do? I follow you out of necessity. Well, (?) you take my sin.

My sin. So people, setting each other as an example and pointing to one another, those people of the same mindset, as travellers on the same road, and at the same time mingling with one another, come into the world. They will live out the world. They too, with those evils, Allah's commands, that limit they will overstep. And finally they will be destroyed. And they will become a fine lesson for the people who come after them. Of course, from these events, for those who take lessons, those who draw the moral from the story; otherwise, if people go on living by their own minds again, the very mentality of the others, that is, of those destroyed, if they carry it, then since they are no different from them, tomorrow, on the Day of Judgment, they will meet in the same place.

Where? Where was the place of those who wronged their own souls? Well, it surely won't be Paradise. It will be the abode of Hell, as they turned that abode of eternal bliss into punishment. Yes.

Remember that you were few, and He multiplied you, O people. Allah, who brought you in their place after the people of Lot, made your tribe multiply. Now, instead of boasting of lineage and descent, give thanks to Allah and worship Him, so that Allah Almighty may complete His favor upon you. O people! If you look back, of those who spread corruption on earth, who associated partners with Allah, who denied Allah's verses, who in immorality overstepped the bounds, what has become of their end?

(?) their overstepping of bounds, pushing the limits, the evils they did; because of these, He wiped them off the earth. Yes.

Now, however, you have become people who race each other to follow the traces of the destroyed. I am an adviser and counsellor to you, he said.

Yes, I am an adviser and counsellor, he said.

Now, Allah Almighty, as we said a moment ago, toward His servants on earth rules with justice, not without first showing them the truth; and as a result of the decisions people make by their own will, as long as they do not return to the verses of Allah Almighty, they deserve destruction or else, in our time, calamity.

So then, the prophets, the scholars, the scholars who are the heirs of the prophets, by Allah Almighty's command, entrust the truth to people. The truth.

Since the prophets are like the elder and father of their peoples, since they are like a father, no father wants his child to suffer punishment. So however bad a child may be, toward that father even if hostile, in the end that father, when that child is to suffer punishment, is moved to mercy and forgives him. A father.

And the prophets are more merciful than a father.

They never want their peoples to come to such punishment.

Since after the prophets, after the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), no prophet will come again, the scholars, their heirs, as heirs too, knowledge, the honor of knowledge, the honor of knowledge, says Allah Almighty. With the honor of knowledge they are compassionate and merciful toward people. Where is the honor of knowledge here?

The honor of knowledge here is that person's, that scholar's, we will say. The scholar who is heir of the Prophet, of whom Allah Almighty: the passing of your scholars to the hereafter is like the sun going and darkness coming; these are the people mentioned thus. They know the meanings of the verses very well. Of Allah Almighty's upon His servants, well, mercy he knows very well. So, people's destinies no one but Allah knows; therefore in the world, that these people who come into the world will stray into errors with their partial will, he knows far better. (?) So, restraining them from the evils they have done, with the mercy in his heart and the love and affection he has for people, he invites them to the way of truth.

He tries to save them. Just as the prophets struggle for their peoples, to bring them to the right path, to save them, the scholars are the same. They struggle so that they come to the right path. Hodja, sometimes you speak to people a bit harshly, I mean, you say 'superstition this, superstition that', you drive people away, you may say. As for my calling them superstition: I don't say superstition to an ordinary person. An ordinary person may be bound by superstitions, that is, by errors he may be bound. I don't say superstition to him. But if he is at the head of a society and manages a society, and teaches that society these errors as Allah's verses or as hadiths, then the word superstition is too mild for him. For if such a person is at the head of a society, it is so that he knows the truth well.

Yes.