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فَإِن لَّمْ تَفْعَلُواْ وَلَن تَفْعَلُواْ فَٱتَّقُواْ ٱلنَّارَ ٱلَّتِي وَقُودُهَا ٱلنَّاسُ وَٱلْحِجَارَةُ أُعِدَّتْ لِلْكَٰفِرِينَ
٢٤
-Al-Baqarah ( البقرة )

Kashani Tafsir

And if you do not, then be pliant, submit, believe and abandon obstinacy that will eventually lead you to the Fire. The requisite, that is either faith or submission, has been omitted, while the concomitant, which is to guard against the Fire, has replaced it, so that the proof that denial necessarily leads to entering the Fire and the eventuality of chastisement for them is stronger. As for His saying and you will not, is a parenthetical statement informing [them] of the unseen in the knowledge that the intellects of those who are veiled are barred from such [knowledge]; [then fear the Fire] what is meant by the Fire is their being consumed by the upheaval of their souls and the evil of their natures, [natures] which are turned away from the spiritual holy spirit and the breeze of the tasting of the Compassionate, and deprived from the pleasure of the coolness of certainty and the safety of the abode of permanence, severed [as their natures are] by the habits of the senses and corporeal pleasures, prohibited by what they have become addicted and accustomed to, while there remain [within them] the yearning for that [spirit] and the rapture [felt for it], [but] the deeply rooted conditions of attachment to the lower affairs in them and their love of earthly bodies are the causes of the igniting of their fires, which is why He says: whose fuel is men, and stones, that is, the silent sensory lower matters to which they are attached out of love so that the forms of these [matters] have become deeply-rooted in their souls while their souls have become imprisoned by having inclined to these very [forms]. As the Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, said: 'Every person is gathered [at the resurrection] with the one that he loves, so that if one of you loved a stone he will be gathered with it'. How can it be otherwise when his own form has fixed itself within him through love so that the form of his heart has become his own form. Know that the [intensity of the] heat of the fire follows from its [arche-]typal form that constitutes its spirituality and its kingdom, for otherwise it would be equal in its specific qualities to all bodies; that spirituality are sparks of the fire of God's overwhelming supra-sensory power after its descent into several ranks, such as its descent into the rank of the soul upon the upheaval of rage, for the upheaval of rage might have the effect of consuming the character traits in a way that not even fire might have on firewood. Hence it can be known that not every thing that receives heat has to be hot. For if physical fire results from spiritual fire, then its pain must undoubtedly be stronger and longer lasting from the other fire. How can it be otherwise when every physical capacity which is finite is lesser than any spiritual capacity. Because of this signification it is said that the fire of Hell was washed with water 70 times before it was sent down to this world so that it can be made use of; prepared for the disbelievers, who are veiled from religion severed as they are from their wants.