Say: "Shall I point out to you something much worse than this, (as judged) by the treatment it received from Allah? those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He transformed into apes and swine, those who worshipped evil;- these are (many times) worse in rank, and far more astray from the even path!" Al-Ma'idah 5:60 ⧉
Tafsir:
When the call for true and pure religion goes out those who claim, on the basis of a self-made religion, to have a monopoly of devotion to God, develop such an extreme aversion to it that they lose all sense of rationality. They even ridicule things that are unanimously treated as sacred. This was how some people of Madinah behaved. They did not hesitate even to ridicule the adhan (the call to prayer). Any relation between Muslims and such insensate and frivolous people can be in connection only with missionary activity and can never be that of friendship. The result of such people’s lack of fear of God is that they consider pure Muslims to be criminals and, notwithstanding all of their own crimes, they blatantly hold, before God, that their dealings are absolutely fair. Such insensitivity blunts their conscience when it comes to distinguishing between Truth and falsehood and prevents their amending this state of affairs. In outward form, they may appear to be human beings but, with regard to their inner qualities, they are the worst animals. A man’s delicate, subtle feelings, such as modesty, broadmindedness, the desire for cleanliness, etc., which function as the watch-guards of God within him and prevent him from evil action, get smothered. The last stage of his downfall comes when his whole life is corroded by satanic ways. When a group reaches this stage, and is distanced from God’s grace to the furthest possible extent, its own nature becomes distorted and it becomes a curse to itself and to the rest of humanity. Having drifted so far away from the right path of nature, it starts living like the animals. What prevents a man from following the dictates of his desires is his moral fibre. But when obstinacy and enmity dominate him, his ability to think becomes suppressed and then there is nothing to combat the pressure of his desires. He may be a human being in appearance but, inside he is an animal; a man with deep insight, just by looking at him, can tell what animal is hidden inside the human exterior.