The likeness of those who refute their Lord is : their toils are like a heap of ash upon which blows a gust of wind one stormy day, and none of which they had earned is left behind! And that, indeed, is a perpetual quandary!

(As in many other verses before, the significance of being a believer is brought home to those who refuse to believe that, for a man to cement his righteous deeds and benefit from their outcome, he needs to be a believer first and foremost, for without its solid plinth, the edifice of righteousness stands on shaky ground and will topple in the fierce winds of sinfulness and solecism. The parable used in the verse is that, every virtuous deed performed, every portion of wealth spent in almsgiving, every pillow lent to bring comfort to a weary head, every morsel of bread put in a hungry mouth, every fast observed, every tear dried, every tile used for sheltering the destitutes and every brick laid towards constructing Allah's sanctuaries is all like a heap of ashes piled up in the midst of storms which gets blown away the moment a gust of wind arrives and whirls it into the vacuous nullity of oblivion, unless a protective rampart has been built around it with impervious slabs of faith).