Picture someone climbing. He has found the high road at last, the one with a view and a direction, and he is walking it carefully along the lip of a cliff. Then hands come up out of the rocks below. They get a grip on his ankles and they pull, and before he can catch himself he is over the edge and down, sprawled on the low ground, his head ringing. When he comes to, he does not climb back. He just wanders, this way and that, no idea where he is or where he was going. And up on the path he fell from, people who love him are leaning over the edge and calling his name. Come back. Come up to us. He hears them, and he keeps wandering.
That is the picture Allah strikes in Surah al-An'am, and it is one of the most precise things in the Qur'an about how a person loses their faith. This is day twelve of twenty-seven, retold faithfully from Nouman Ali Khan's series, and to feel the weight of it you have to know who was being pulled, and by whom.
Leave the ones who play at religion
وَذَرِ ٱلَّذِينَ ٱتَّخَذُوا۟ دِينَهُمْ لَعِبًا وَلَهْوًا وَغَرَّتْهُمُ ٱلْحَيَوٰةُ ٱلدُّنْيَا ۚ وَذَكِّرْ بِهِۦٓ أَن تُبْسَلَ نَفْسٌۢ بِمَا كَسَبَتْ لَيْسَ لَهَا مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ وَلِىٌّ وَلَا شَفِيعٌ وَإِن تَعْدِلْ كُلَّ عَدْلٍ لَّا يُؤْخَذْ مِنْهَآ ۗ أُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ ٱلَّذِينَ أُبْسِلُوا۟ بِمَا كَسَبُوا۟ ۖ لَهُمْ شَرَابٌ مِّنْ حَمِيمٍ وَعَذَابٌ أَلِيمٌۢ بِمَا كَانُوا۟ يَكْفُرُونَ
“And leave those who take their religion as amusement and diversion and whom the worldly life has deluded. But remind with it [i.e., the Qur'an], lest a soul be given up to destruction for what it earned; it will have other than Allāh no protector and no intercessor. And if it should offer every compensation, it would not be taken from it [i.e., that soul]. Those are the ones who are given to destruction for what they have earned. For them will be a drink of scalding water and a painful punishment because they used to disbelieve.”
Surah al-An'am 6:70 Read 6:70 with tafsir
Al-An'am came down in Makkah, and most of the people listening did not believe. It is wave after wave of dialogue: their objections raised and answered, their questions turned back on them. Just before our picture, Allah gives the Prophet ﷺ an instruction, and it is a sharp one. Leave the people who have taken their religion as a game and a distraction, whom the life of this world has fooled.
Nouman Ali Khan opens this out, because it is a comment on what religion had become for almost everyone but the believer. For most people, he says, religion was never about the next life at all; it was a way of feeling good, a festival, a season, something to keep you entertained and, often enough, something the powerful used to keep the public asleep. People climbed the steps of the temple to place an order, like a spiritual storefront: make her love me, give me the harvest, defeat the enemy. Every prayer cashed out into something in this world. Against all of that, the believers had walked away toward something else entirely. And the people they left behind wanted them back.
The two weapons used to pull you back
قُلْ أَنَدْعُوا۟ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ مَا لَا يَنفَعُنَا وَلَا يَضُرُّنَا وَنُرَدُّ عَلَىٰٓ أَعْقَابِنَا بَعْدَ إِذْ هَدَىٰنَا ٱللَّهُ كَٱلَّذِى ٱسْتَهْوَتْهُ ٱلشَّيَٰطِينُ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ حَيْرَانَ لَهُۥٓ أَصْحَٰبٌ يَدْعُونَهُۥٓ إِلَى ٱلْهُدَى ٱئْتِنَا ۗ قُلْ إِنَّ هُدَى ٱللَّهِ هُوَ ٱلْهُدَىٰ ۖ وَأُمِرْنَا لِنُسْلِمَ لِرَبِّ ٱلْعَٰلَمِينَ
“Say, "Shall we invoke instead of Allāh that which neither benefits us nor harms us and be turned back on our heels after Allāh has guided us? [We would then be] like one whom the devils enticed [to wander] upon the earth confused, [while] he has companions inviting him to guidance, [calling], 'Come to us.'" Say, "Indeed, the guidance of Allāh is the [only] guidance; and we have been commanded to submit to the Lord of the worlds."”
Surah al-An'am 6:71 Read 6:71 with tafsir
Now the answer the believers are taught to give. Shall we call on something that cannot help us and cannot hurt us, and be turned back on our heels after Allah has guided us? Hidden inside that question, Nouman Ali Khan points out, is the exact campaign being run against the new Muslims. Picture a young man, maybe seventeen, who has just become Muslim, and his older brother sitting him down. Mom hasn't eaten in three days. Everyone respects in this tribe thinks this man you follow is a liar. You are throwing away your future; no one will marry you, no one will do business with you, we will have to disown you. And then the arm around the shoulder: just pretend, do it for dad, come back, I will give you the two horses, it is not too late.
Two weapons, he says, and they never change. A disbelieving society always offers a believer the same pair: benefit if you become more like us, and harm if you do not. Here are the good things waiting if you come back; here is everything you will lose if you hold on. Whether it is the year of the Prophet ﷺ or this year, those two forces are always in the room. And the believer's reply is a quiet act of defiance: that thing you are calling me to cannot benefit and cannot harm. Notice the wording, Nouman Ali Khan says: it is not even a who, it is a what, an inanimate nothing. We are not afraid of your harm, and we are not seduced by your benefit.
Turned back on the heels
There is a whole picture folded into one phrase, turned back on our heels. The Arabs used it for someone who sets out on a long, hard journey, gets barely a tenth of the way in, and loses heart. It is too hot, the road is harder than I thought, the reward is not worth this. So he spins on his heel and goes back the way he came, back to the safety of home, cutting his losses while he still can.
That, Nouman Ali Khan says, is precisely how Islam felt to those first Muslims, and how it can feel to anyone: every step seems to make life harder, not easier. The family gets angrier, the money gets tighter, the friends fall away, the isolation grows. So the temptation is always there: you could just turn back and undo all this damage. But the believers add four words that change everything. Turned back, after Allah has guided us. Guided us to what? Not to a festival, not to an easier life, but to Allah Himself. He pictures a man told there is a well three hours' walk into the desert heat with a hundred kilos of gold at the bottom, guaranteed. Offer him a thousand to turn around and he laughs at you; in his head he is already rich, and the heat has stopped mattering. When you can see what waits at the end of the road, you will bleed and sweat and cry with a smile, because it is worth it.
The hands on your ankles
Now the image itself: like one whom the devils lured away in the land, wandering, lost. The verb is the heart of it. Nouman Ali Khan traces it to a root that means to fall, the same root used when a star falls from its height, and the form here means to make someone fall, or to keep trying to make them fall. So Imam ar-Razi's picture, which he passes on, is of a man walking the edge of a cliff while hands reach up from below, grabbing at his leg, hooking into him, dragging him down. He was up there on the high road. Now he is down here on the low ground.
And there is a second meaning braided into the same word, he says, that makes the whole thing land. That root also gives the word hawa, the lowest desires: greed, lust, ego, the animal pull in a person. So the picture is really two pictures at once. Devils trying to make you fall, and devils luring you down into your own desires. That, he insists, is almost always the real story under a lost faith. A person can be completely convinced Islam is true, clear in the mind and the heart, and still be slipping into a dark place, and the only thing that can do that is desire. The arguments come later, as cover. Behind the eight intellectual problems someone has collected with the religion, more often than not, is a hawa they are too embarrassed to name, so they dress it in philosophy instead. Debunk problem one and they leap to two, then three, and when you have answered all eight they circle back to one and suddenly have somewhere to be.
Not one devil, but a legion
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ ٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ وَكُونُوا۟ مَعَ ٱلصَّٰدِقِينَ
“O you who have believed, fear Allāh and be with those who are true.”
Surah at-Tawbah 9:119 Read 9:119 with tafsir
Look closely and you notice Allah did not say the devil lured him. He said the devils, plural, and Nouman Ali Khan will not let that slide past. It is rarely one tempter. Some of the pull comes from the family, some from the old friends, some from that one uncle you have been avoiding, some from the professor, some from the employer, some from the coworker, some from the media, some from an influencer you half-follow, some from the algorithm quietly feeding you the next thing and the next. Each one on its own is a small shaytan. Together they are a legion, and together they are more than enough to start working a person loose.
But here, he says, our religion holds two truths in tension that you have to keep together. On one side, your environment alone cannot destroy your iman: Ibrahim, peace be upon him, the Prophet ﷺ, the Companions, almost everyone whose faith we look up to stood firm while surrounded by hostility. On the other side, you are not a robot whose faith, once switched on, can never be moved. You need a support. Allah Himself ties the two together: be conscious of Allah, and be with the truthful. As strong as your faith may be, as good as your answers to every doubter, you still need company that holds you up.
Come to us, not come to the truth
Then the most tender turn in the whole parable. The man is down in the low ground, wandering, and Allah says he still has companions calling him: come to us. The word for them, Nouman Ali Khan notes, is not some distant word for acquaintances. It is ashab, the people who spent real time close to you, who kept you company, who are still up there on the path watching you stumble below, and who love you enough to keep calling.
And look at what they say. They do not call him to the truth. They say, come to us. There is a world in that difference. To call someone to the truth is to make the case, to argue why Islam is real, and that is not what this person needs, because he never lost the argument. He fell because of something dark in his emotions, and what he needs is not another proof, it is a hand and a presence. Come to us. We love you. Come sit with us, come have dinner, just come back. He contrasts it with the false friends, the ones who lured him down, who also call out, except what they really say is come to your desires, be free, do what makes you happy, live your life. And the moment you are in trouble, those friends are nowhere; you wanted to be free, so good luck. Your true companions, when they see you fall, do not say be free. They say come home.
Standing, or wandering
وَأَنْ أَقِيمُوا۟ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَٱتَّقُوهُ ۚ وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِىٓ إِلَيْهِ تُحْشَرُونَ
“And to establish prayer and fear Him." And it is He to whom you will be gathered.”
Surah al-An'am 6:72 Read 6:72 with tafsir
There is one more thing, Nouman Ali Khan says, and it is hidden in the geometry of the next verse. After the believers refuse to turn back, they are told to establish the prayer and to be conscious of Him, and to remember that to Him you will all be gathered. Think about what salah is, physically. It is to stand. You plant yourself, you hold your ground, you do not drift, because your face is toward Allah. Set that beside the man in the parable, on his feet but going nowhere, wandering the low land with no direction at all.
So the believer stands in front of Allah in this life, on purpose, while the one who is being lured away wanders off wherever the pull takes him. And the verse closes the trap gently: wander all you like, in the end every single person will be gathered back to Him. The only difference will be between the one who chose to stand before Allah now and the one who has to be herded back at the end, the word for it carrying the sense of animals driven in a crowd. A man who fell off a cliff and is wandering the desert, gathered up at last whether he wants it or not. Iman, in these verses, is being somewhere high, with a direction, in living conversation with Allah through His own words. Losing it is being dragged lower and lower, with no direction at all.
The mirror: which way are you being pulled
Now the picture turns toward you, the way every example in this series finally does. Maybe, Nouman Ali Khan says, you read this and faces come to mind, people you have watched wander off into that low and aimless place. Or maybe, if you are honest, you have felt the hands on your own ankles. You came to the light and left the darkness, and then an old friend turns up: yo, remember the old days, come through, you do not have to do anything, just sit with us, just drink the water while we do the rest. And you think, only this once. But you are not as strong as you think, and that is the whole point. The environment will not break you on its own, but neither are you a fortress that needs no walls.
So two questions to carry out of this. First, which voices are calling you, and what are they actually calling you to: come to your desires, or come home? The ones who want you free and gone the moment you are in trouble, or the ones who want you back beside them? Choose your ashab on purpose, the company at-Tawbah names, the truthful, because no faith is so strong it can do without them. And second, if you are the one up on the path watching someone slide, remember what the parable teaches you to say. Not here are eight reasons you are wrong. Just, we love you, come to us. The way down is a slow fall pretended away as freedom. The way back is a hand, and a place still kept for you. O Allah, do not let our heels turn after You have set our feet, hold us on the high road, and bring back everyone we love who has wandered into the dark.