۞ (Muhammad), recall the brother of the people of Ad, when he warned his people in the valley of al-ahqaf saying, "There existed many warners before and after him. Do not worship anything other than God. I am afraid for you about the torment of the great Day". 21 They said, 'What, hast thou come to pervert us from our gods? Then bring us that thou promisest us, if indeed thou speakest truly.' 22 He said, 'Knowledge is only with God, and I deliver to you the Message with which I was sent; but I see you are an ignorant people.' 23 Then, when they beheld it as a dense cloud coming toward their valleys, they said: Here is a cloud bringing us rain. Nay, but it is that which ye did seek to hasten, a wind wherein is painful torment, 24 Destroying everything by the Command of its Lord! So they became such that nothing could be seen except their dwellings! Thus do We recompense the people who are Mujrimun (polytheists, disbelievers, sinners, etc.)! 25 And yet, We had established them securely in a manner in which We have never established you, [O people of later times;] and We had endowed them with hearing, and sight, and [knowledgeable] hearts: but neither their hearing, nor their sight, nor their hearts were of the least avail to them, seeing that they went on rejecting God's messages; and [in the end] they were overwhelmed by the very thing which they had been wont to deride. 26