وَمَا كَانَ رَبُّكَ لِيُهْلِكَ الْقُرَىٰ بِظُلْمٍ وَأَهْلُهَا مُصْلِحُونَ (117)
(11:117) And your Lord is not such as would wrongfully destroy human habitations while their inhabitants are righteous. *115
*115). These verses bring out, in a significantly instructive manner, the real factors which caused the destruction of those nations whose history has been narrated earlier (see verse 36 ff. above). Reviewing that history, the Qur'an points out the single common denominator of all those nations which met their doom in the past. All those nations had formerly been favoured with God's blessings. But drunk with affluence, they resorted to mischief on earth. Their collective conscience was also completely vitiated. The result was that no righteous person was left among them to prevent them from committing evils. And if any such person did exist, their number was either too small, or their voice too feeble to prevent evils from predominating. This situation eventually invited God's wrath upon them. Had they not been so evil, there was no reason why God should punish them. After all, He bears no such grudge against His creatures that would prompt Him to punish people even when they act righteously.
The above statement is intended to underscore three points. Firstly, that it is imperative that there should always be a good number of righteous people in every society; those who would invite people to righteousness and prevent them from evil. For God likes to see that there is righteousness in the world. And if God does tolerate the existence of evil in human society, He does so since the potential for righteousness continues to exist in that society. But such tolerance endures only as long as that potential remains. However, if the condition of a community deteriorates, rendering it altogether devoid of good people, or if the good people in that community become an insignificant minority, too weak to prevent it from proceeding along its evil ways, then God's chastisement begins to loom large over it. That much can be said for sure. However, it is difficult to say with any precision when God's chastisement will actually smite that community and destroy it.
Secondly, a community that is prepared to put up with everything except a group of righteous people in its midst - people that call men to do good and forbid them from doing evil - is certainly destined for self-destruction. The attitude of that community clearly shows that it cherishes all that would lead to its destruction, and that it is intolerant of all that would ensure its survival.
Thirdly, God's final decision whether to punish a community or not depends on the extent to which that community is possessed of the elements that would enable it to respond to the call of truth. If it has such people in good numbers that would suffice to extirpate evil and establish a righteous order, such a community is spared the kind of chastisement which embraces whole communities and totally destroys them. If it is subjected to some partial rather than an all-embracing chastisement, the purpose of it is to enable its righteous elements to mend their ways.
It is possible, however, that in spite of continued efforts, the community will be unable to throw up a sufficient number of good people needed to bring about its reform. It is also possible that the community will demonstrate by its action that it is full of corrupt people and altogether bereft of virtuous ones. The community, in such a case, has obviously become a heap of coal in which no diamonds are left. When such a stage is reached God causes a fire to erupt, a fire that reduces this heap of coal to a heap of ashes. (For further elaboration see al-Dhariyat 51, n. 34.)