And when We give mankind the taste of mercy after some hardship which had afflicted them, they immediately start conspiring against Our signs; proclaim, “The secret plan of Allah is the fastest”; indeed Our angels record your scheming. 21 He it is Who enableth you to traverse through land and sea; so that ye even board ships;- they sail with them with a favourable wind, and they rejoice thereat; then comes a stormy wind and the waves come to them from all sides, and they think they are being overwhelmed: they cry unto Allah, sincerely offering (their) duty unto Him saying, "If thou dost deliver us from this, we shall truly show our gratitude!" 22 Then when He rescues them, they start wrongfully committing oppression in the earth; O mankind! Your oppression is only a torment against yourselves; derive the benefit until you live in this world; you have then to return to Us and thereupon We shall show you your misdeeds. 23 The likeness of this present life is as water that We send down out of heaven, and the plants of the earth mingle with it whereof men and cattle eat, till, when the earth has taken on its glitter and has decked itself fair, and its inhabitants think they have power over it, Our command comes upon it by night or day, and We make it stubble, as though yesterday it flourished not. Even so We distinguish the signs for a people who reflect. 24 Allah calls to the home of peace (i.e. Paradise, by accepting Allah's religion of Islamic Monotheism and by doing righteous good deeds and abstaining from polytheism and evil deeds) and guides whom He wills to a Straight Path. 25 ۞ For the people of virtue, is goodness and more than that; and neither will the blackness nor disgrace come upon their faces; it is they who are the people of Paradise; they will abide in it forever. 26 And (as for) those who have earned evil, the punishment of an evil is the like of it, and abasement shall come upon them-- they shall have none to protect them from Allah-- as if their faces had been covered with slices of the dense darkness of night; these are the inmates of the fire; in it they shall abide. 27 Remember the Day whereon We shall gather them together, then We shall say unto those who associated: keep your place, ye and your associate gods. Then We shall cause split between them: and their associate-gods will say: it was not us that ye were worshipping. 28 God suffices as a witness between us and you. We were entirely unaware that you worshipped us." 29 Here will every soul come to know what it has sent ahead, and they will be returned to Allah – their true Master, and they will lose all that they used to fabricate. 30