O Muhammad, say, "I have been forbidden to worship those, whom you invoke beside Allah. " Say, "I will not follow your wishes for if I did that I should have gone astray, and would not be of the right guided. " Say, "I take my stand on a clear proof from my Lord, and you have rejected it. Now, that which you demand to be hastened is not in my power,39 for Allah alone has the sole authority of passing judgment: He declares the Truth and He is the best of arbiters" . Say, "Had I the power to hasten that which you are demanding, the dispute between you and me would have been settled long before this, but Allah knows best how to deal with evil-doers. He alone has the keys of the "unseen", of which none has the knowledge but He. He knows all that is in the land and in the sea; there is not a leaf that falls from a tree but He knows about it; there is not a grain in the darkest bowels of the earth of which He is not aware; everything fresh and dry has been recorded in an open Book. It is He Who recalls your souls at night and knows what you do during the day; then next day He returns you to your usual work to complete the fixed term of your life. At long last, you shall all return to Him and He will let you know what you had been doing. He reigns supreme over His servants and appoints those, who keep watch over you40 till the time the death of anyone of you approaches; then the angels sent by Him take away his soul and do not show the least negligence in the performance of their duty. Then all are brought back to Allah, their real Master. Beware of it that the sole authority of passing judgment rests with Him alone and He is the swiftest at reckoning." O Muhammad, ask them, "Who rescues you from perils in the darkness of the land and sea? Who is He Whom you implore humbly and invoke secretly (at the time of affliction)? To whom do you make this promise: `We will be grateful if you rescue us from this affliction'." Say, "Allah delivers you from that and every other affliction; yet you associate other partners with Him."41 Say, "He has the power to bring a scourge on you from above you or from beneath your feet or to split you into discordant factions to make you taste the violence of one another. " Behold! how We present Our Signs over and over again in different ways before them so that they should understand the Reality.42 Your people are rejecting it (the Qur'an), although it is the Truth. Say, "I have not been made a supervisor over you.43 Every event takes its prescribed time to appear; and, by and by, you yourselves shall see the consequences." And, O Muhammad, when you see that people are finding fault with Our Revelations, withdraw from them till they get engaged in some other talk; and, if ever Satan causes you to forget this,44 quit the company of such unjust people when you realize your mistake. Though the pious people are not in any way accountable for them, yet it is their duty to admonish them; perhaps they may refrain from their evil ways.45 And leave alone those who have taken their faith as a sport and pastime and have been deluded by the life of this world; nevertheless, go on admonishing them by reciting the Qur'an to them lest any person should be seized because of his own deeds, and that too at the time, when there would be no protector, no helper and no intercessor to rescue him from Allah, and when no conceivable amount of ransom would be accepted from him; this is because such people shall be seized in consequence of what they themselves had earned; they shall get boiling water to drink and a painful torment to suffer for their rejection of the Truth.