From in Front, from Behind, from the Right and the Left

One point worth bringing forward is verse 17. Shayṭān says this:

Thumma la-ātiyannahum min bayni aydīhim wa-min khalfihim wa-ʿan aymānihim wa-ʿan shamāʾilihim wa-lā tajidu aktharahum shākirīn. This is Shayṭān's warning, or promise, or vow. He says that he will surely come upon them, attack them and beguile them, from before them and from behind them, from their right and from their left: You will not find most of them grateful. We would be grateful; we would go against that, for if we are ungrateful and fall into this, we have lost. Shayṭān has won, in that sense. Hence some of the ʿulamāʾ have said that when a man truly wants something of Allah, and is afraid of all these others, let him go into sujūd. Shayṭān cannot come at him from the sujūd; he cannot come at him from the prostration.

Then comes the discourse between the people of the Fire and of Paradise — in Paradise and upon the Aʿrāf. And finally, reading the description of the enemies of Allah and of the prophets, they say, for instance:

Innā la-narāka fī ḍalālin mubīn: we see you in… This was the accusation brought against the prophets by their peoples: we see you in manifest error. That is: we think your ways wrong; this is the true way, the enlightened way. Are there parallels to be seen? Another is in verse 66 — that was verse 60; verse 66 again:

Innā la-narāka fī safāhatin wa-innā la-naẓunnuka mina al-kādhibīn: we see that you have folly in you, and engage in folly, and we take you to be in the wrong. It is from this quarter that such remarks about letterboxes come — that Muslim women resemble letterboxes. It is a kind of psycholinguistic discourse, meant to demean the practice and make it appear inferior; to make it seem impossible that it should be otherwise. To such a degree that even some Muslims believe it, or incline that way: that the niqāb is excessive. The wives of the Prophet (peace be upon him) wore it. So even if one does not wish to wear it, one should not put it out of Islam. Even if a woman cannot do it, or does not wish to, that is well enough and understandable, so long as she does not reject it. Let her not reject it and treat it as something belonging merely to ISIS. And unfortunately ISIS may have done just that, which puts the niqāb in a bad light. They appropriated the niqāb and the beards and the rest of it, which is a difficulty.