Had your Lord so willed, all those who inhabit the earth would have become believers! But is it desirable (O Mohammed) to coerce people into becoming believers?

10 : 100

No soul has the power to become a believer except by the command of Allah! And the toll of punishment is imposed upon those who are devoid of sense.

10 : 101

Say : 'Cast your eyes on what is there in the heavens and on the earth! But neither revelations nor warnings avail those who are bereft of faith!

10 : 102

Await they for what except such bad times as befell the others who came before them! Say to them : 'Then wait, for I too will wait along with you!'

10 : 103

When they do befall, it is Our messengers and the believers whom We will rescue, as We did in the past, for it is incumbent upon Us to protect the believers! (R)

(It always was the ardent desire of the Prophet that the people to whom he preached the message of Allah benefited from his toils, recognized the truth, took advantage of the golden opportunity of ameliorating themselves and attaining redemption of their sin ridden souls which he had brought to them, making him sad when he saw them throw it away out of sheer arrogance and ignorance.

The above verses contain words of reassurance aimed at elevating his dwindling spirits to the effect that, if such was the will of Allah, He would not have allowed Satan to succeed in demolishing Adam's integrity; He would not have let some of his seed deviate from the righteous path; He would not have separated right from wrong and tested mankind; He would not have permitted the eternal battle between truth and falsehood to carry on unhampered! Instead; He would have eradicated turpitude, effaced darkness, ended grief, obviated sin, put out the fires of hell and widened the frontiers of Paradise!

But such was not His will. He deliberately created two antipodes called good and bad, right and wrong, true and false, virtue and solecism and gave man the discretion to choose one of these by his own free will. Adam made his choice and capitulated; Cane and Abel made their choices and capitulated; Pharaoh, Kora, Hamaan, Samiri, Abu Jehl and Abu Lahab, they all made their choices and they all capitulated!

Allah has reiterated in these verses to comfort the Prophet that whereas believing or not believing is a matter of man's choice, giving him the inclination to believe is the choice of Allah with which He graces only those whom He will; that no soul on earth has the power to seek redemption unless He has decreed it in its favour; that faith is like a fountain that has to gush forth from within and not sprinkled from above; that there is no use forcing people to believe, if they were not convinced of the difference which believing and not believing makes; that no matter how many portents of Allah's ascendancy are shown to them, the eyes of those who were bereft of conviction would not transmit the images they see to their brains! So what is the point in trying to save those who have no wish to save themselves? What is the purpose of grieving for those who do not deserve to be grieved over?