Guidance and misguidance are two
comprehensive words; they encompass every felicity and infelicity that
comes from Allah to His good and wicked servants respectively. As Allah
describes in the Qur’an: He makes His good servants live a happy life
(Q16:97), strengthens them with the spirit of faith (Q58:22), bring them
out of the darkness into the light (Q2:257), and gives them a light by
which they walk among the people (Q6:122); He has taken them under His
protection and guardianship (Q13:37), and there is no fear for them, nor
shall they grieve (Q2:38); He is with them, answers them when they call
on Him (Q2:186), and remembers them when they remember Him (Q2:152); and
the angels come down to them with good news of eternal peace (Q41:30).
Diametrically opposed to it is the
condition of evil-doers. Allah causes them to err (Q2:26), takes them
out of the light into the darkness (Q2:257), sets a seal upon their
hearts and hearings, and a covering over their eyes (Q2:7); He alters
their faces turning them on their backs (Q4:47); places chains on their
necks and these reach up to their chins, so they have their heads raised
aloft (Q36:8), and makes a barrier before them and a barrier behind
them, then He covers them over so that they cannot see (Q36:9); He
appoints for them the Satans to become their associates (Q43:36), and
they turn them away from the right path while they think that they are
guided aright (Q43:37); those Satans make their misdeeds to seem good to
them and they are their guardians (Q8:49); Allah leads them on by steps
from whence they perceive not; and yet He respites them, but His plan is
firm (Q68:44-45); He makes a plan for them and leaves them alone in
their rebellion, blindly wandering on (Q2:16).