The Quran

Preface

يا أَيُّهَا الَّذينَ آمَنوا توبوا إِلَى اللَّهِ تَوبَةً نَصوحًا عَسىٰ رَبُّكُم أَن يُكَفِّرَ عَنكُم سَيِّئَاتِكُم وَيُدخِلَكُم جَنّاتٍ تَجري مِن تَحتِهَا الأَنهارُ يَومَ لا يُخزِي اللَّهُ النَّبِيَّ وَالَّذينَ آمَنوا مَعَهُ ۖ نورُهُم يَسعىٰ بَينَ أَيديهِم وَبِأَيمانِهِم يَقولونَ رَبَّنا أَتمِم لَنا نورَنا وَاغفِر لَنا ۖ إِنَّكَ عَلىٰ كُلِّ شَيءٍ قَديرٌ

Yusuf Ali

O ye who believe!¹ Turn to God with sincere repentance: In the hope that your Lord will remove² from you your ills and admit you to Gardens beneath which Rivers flow,- the Day that God will not permit to be humiliated the Prophet and those who believe with him. Their Light will run³ forward before them and by their right hands, while they say, “Our Lord! Perfect our Light for us, and grant us Forgiveness: for Thou hast power over all things.”

The opposition of sex against sex, individual or concerted, having been condemned, we are now exhorted to turn to the Light, and to realise that the good and righteous can retain their integrity even though their own mates, in spite of their example and precept, remain in evil and sin.
Whatever may have been the faults of the past, unite in good deeds, and abandon petty sectional jealousies, and God will remove your difficulties and distresses, and all the evils from which you suffer. Indeed He will grant you the Bliss of Heaven and save you from any humiliation which you may have brought on yourselves by your conduct and on the revered Prophet and Teacher whose name you professed to take.
See 57:12, and n. 5288. The darkness of evil will be dispelled, and the Light of God will be realised by them more and more. But even so they will not be content: for they will pray for the least taint of evil to be removed from them, and perfection to be granted to them. In that exalted state they will be within reach of perfection-not by their own merits, but by the infinite Mercy and Power of God.