100وَما كانَ لِنَفسٍ أَن تُؤمِنَ إِلّا بِإِذنِ اللَّهِ ۚ وَيَجعَلُ الرِّجسَ عَلَى الَّذينَ لا يَعقِلونَMuhammad Asadnotwithstanding that no human being can ever attain to faith otherwise than by God's leave,1 and [that] it is He who lays the loathsome evil [of disbelief] upon those who will not use their reason?2I.e., by virtue of God's guidance and within the compass of what He has decreed to be man's nature, comprising the ability to discriminate between right and wrong. Since man's freedom of moral choice expresses itself in his willingness or unwillingness to conform to his true, God-willed nature, it can be said to depend, in the last resort, on God's grace. (Cf. in this respect surah 2, note 19, as well as surah 14, note 4.)Cf. 8:22 and 55, as well as the corresponding note 58. As in those verses, unbelief is here shown to be the result of a person's a-priori unwillingness to use his reason with a view to understanding God's messages, be they directly expressed in the revelations granted to His prophets, or - as the Qur'an once again stresses in the next verse - open to man's perception in the observable phenomena of His creation.