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What is the interpretation of the verse: "O you who have believed, upon you is [the responsibility of] yourselves. No harm will come to you from one who has gone astray when you have been guided"?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

The Almighty's saying: "O you who have believed, upon you is [the responsibility for] yourselves. No harm will come to you from one who has gone astray when you have been guided." This means strive to rectify yourselves, and if you rectify yourselves, then the misguidance of whoever goes astray will not harm you, because every soul will be recompensed for what it has earned. And the understanding of some people that the verse means abandoning enjoining good and forbidding evil is incorrect, because enjoining good and forbidding evil is a communal obligation (fard kifa'i). Rather, the intended meaning is that whoever fulfills their duty in enjoining and forbidding, or is unable to do so, then the misguidance of whoever goes astray after that will not harm them.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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