﴿ حَتَّىٰٓ إِذَا فَتَحْنَا عَلَيْهِم بَابًۭا ذَا عَذَابٍۢ شَدِيدٍ إِذَا هُمْ فِيهِ مُبْلِسُونَ ﴾

“until We open before them a gate of [truly] severe suffering [in the life to come]: and then, lo! they will be broken in spirit.”

In the Makkan period of Islam when the Quraysh rejected the Prophet Muhammad, God imposed famine conditions on the people of Makkah for several years. In accordance with God’s scheme of things, when a community adopts an arrogant attitude and does not accept good advice, He administers a warning punishment to that community in order to soften their hearts and make them pay attention to the Truth. But, events show that man does not learn lessons either from good or adverse conditions. The purpose of both ease and adversity is that man should turn towards God. But, man thinks that the coming of good times is the result of his own talents, while he attributes hard times to the turn of events. In this way he fails to learn a lesson from either set of conditions. Man remains heedless in this way until it is time for God’s final verdict. At that time, he is wonderstruck that what he had considered unimportant and ignored, was the greatest and most important reality of this world.