Hud (Hud)

117. “Nor would your Lord destroy the townships unjustly while their people acted well.”

Allah (s.w.t.) removes His wrath from societies because of the presence of benevolent and righteous individuals who mend their society.

Incidentally, simply being righteous is not sufficient, one must be encouraging others to be righteous as well. Therefore, to emphasize this reality, the Qur’an implies that the reason why Allah eradicated these peoples was because there were no righteous reformists among them.

It was not the case that the Almighty oppressively sought the destruction of established communities despite attempts being made to purify them of all impurities. The verse says:

“Nor would your Lord destroy the townships unjustly while their people acted well.”

Whenever a society was oppressive as a whole but had rediscovered itself, and was about to reform and alter itself, there would be reason for it to remain, while if it remained oppressive and did not try to reform, and purge itself of its evil ways, there would be no reason for it to survive.