The Quran

وَتَراهُم يُعرَضونَ عَلَيها خاشِعينَ مِنَ الذُّلِّ يَنظُرونَ مِن طَرفٍ خَفِيٍّ ۗ وَقالَ الَّذينَ آمَنوا إِنَّ الخاسِرينَ الَّذينَ خَسِروا أَنفُسَهُم وَأَهليهِم يَومَ القِيامَةِ ۗ أَلا إِنَّ الظّالِمينَ في عَذابٍ مُقيمٍ

Muhammad Asad

And thou wilt see them exposed to that [doom], humbling themselves in abasement, looking [around] with a furtive glance - the while those who had attained to faith will say, "Verily, lost on [this] Day of Resurrection are they who have squandered their own and their followers' selves!"¹ Oh, verily, the evildoers will fall into long-lasting suffering,

The term ahl denotes primarily the "people" of one town, country or family, as well as the "fellow-members" of one race, religion, profession, etc. In its wider, ideological sense it is applied to people who have certain characteristics in common, e.g., ahl al-'ilm ("people of knowledge", i.e., scholars), or who follow one and the same persuasion or belief, e.g., ahl al-kitab ("the followers of [earlier] revelation"), ahl al-Qur'an ("the followers of the Qur'an"), and so forth. Since, as has been pointed out in note 44, the above passage refers primarily - though not exclusively - to the tyrants and oppressors spoken of in verse 42, the term ahluhum evidently connotes "their followers". Thus, the above sentence implies that every kind of evildoing (zulm), and particularly the oppression of others, inevitably results in a spiritual injury to, and ultimately the self-destruction of, its perpetrators and/or their followers.