﴿ وَمَا مَنَعَ ٱلنَّاسَ أَن يُؤْمِنُوٓا۟ إِذْ جَآءَهُمُ ٱلْهُدَىٰ وَيَسْتَغْفِرُوا۟ رَبَّهُمْ إِلَّآ أَن تَأْتِيَهُمْ سُنَّةُ ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ أَوْ يَأْتِيَهُمُ ٱلْعَذَابُ قُبُلًۭا ﴾

“for, what is there to keep people from attaining to faith now that guidance has come unto them, and from asking their Sustainer to forgive them their sins - unless it be [their wish] that the fate of the [sinful] people of ancient times should befall them [as well], or that the [ultimate] suffering should befall them in the hereafter?”

And nothing prevented people that is the disbelievers of Mecca from believing an yu’minū is after al-nāsa ‘people’ constitutes the second direct object clause when the guidance the Qur’ān came to them and from asking forgiveness of their Lord without that there should come upon them the precedent of the ancients sunnatu’l-awwalīn constitutes the subject of the verb that is to say Our precedent of dealing with them which is the destruction decreed for them or that the chastisement should come upon them before their very eyes in front of them and for them to see — which was their being killed on the day of Badr a variant reading for qibalan has qubulan which in the accusative is the plural of qabīlin meaning ‘of various kinds’.