Surah 7. Al-A'raf, Ayah 146

As so often in the Qur'an, God's "causing" the sinners to sin is shown to be a consequence of their own behaviour and the result of their free choice. By "those who, without any right, behave haughtily on earth" are obviously meant people who think that their own judgment as to what constitutes right and wrong is the only valid one, and who therefore refuse to submit their personal concerns to the criterion of absolute (i.e., revealed) moral standards; cf. {96:6-7} - "man becomes grossly overweening whenever he believes himself to be self-sufficient".

Rejected Our Signs: again a return to the Plural of impersonal Dignity and Authority, from the singular of personal concern in granting grace and guidance to the Righteous.

The argument may be simplified thus in paraphrase. The right is established on the earth as Allah created it: Nature recognises and obeys Allah's law as fixed for each portion of Creation. But man, because of the gift of Will, sometimes upsets this balance. The root-cause is his arrogance, as it was in the case of Iblis. Allah's Signs are everywhere, but if they are rejected with scorn and blasphemy, Allah will withdraw His grace, for sin hardens the heart and makes it impervious to the truth. Want of faith produces a kind of blindness to spiritual facts, a kind of deafness to the warnings of a Day of Account. If we had contumaciously rejected faith, can we hope for anything but justice,-the just punishment of our sins.