And remember Lot, or We sent Lot as a sign. And We certainly sent upon him. And when it is replaced, the first is a condition for the second, and you see with the sight of the heart, that is: you know that it is an abomination that you have not preceded to it, and that Allah only created the female for the male and did not create the male for the male, nor the female for the female. It is opposed to Allah in His wisdom and decree, and your knowledge of this is greater for your sins and more severe in ugliness and repulsiveness. And therein is evidence that the ugly from Allah is more ugly than from His servants, because He is the All-Knowing of the worlds and the Most Wise of the judges. Or you see it from one another, because they were in their gatherings committing it openly, not concealing from one another in lewdness and shamelessness, and they were sufficient in sin. And it is as if Abu Nuwas built upon their doctrine his saying:

"And proclaim in the name of what you desire and leave me from the nicknames... for there is no good in pleasures without it being concealed.

'Oh, pour me wine and tell me it is wine... and do not give me secretly if it is possible to speak openly.

And proclaim in the name of whom you love and leave me from the nicknames... for there is no good in pleasures without it being concealed."

This is for Abu Nuwas. And 'Oh' is an exclamatory for alertness, as if he said: alert me to pour. And 'tell me it is wine' means: speak openly about it. And his saying: 'if it is possible to speak openly' means: be cautious - and to proclaim something means to reveal it, and to proclaim it means to make it known, that is: make known the name of whom you love as you proclaim the name of wine. And it is narrated: 'And proclaim in the name of what you desire,' that is: what you do. And 'leave me' means: let me be, implying the meaning of distancing me, and he addressed it with 'from' as a metaphor for prohibiting him from mentioning the nicknames, which is what indicates something in a hidden manner, and he likened the hidden expression to the concealment that prevents explicitness.

Or you see the traces of the sinners before you and what befell them. If you say: I interpreted 'you see' as knowledge and then 'but you are a people who are ignorant,' how can they be scholars and ignorant? I say: He meant: you act in the manner of the ignorant by committing this abomination while you know that. Or you are ignorant of the consequence. Or he meant by ignorance the foolishness and shamelessness that they were upon. If you say: 'you are ignorant' is an attribute for a people, and the described is in the form of the absent, why did not the attribute match the described so it was read with 'ya' instead of 'ta'? And likewise 'but you are a people who are being tested'? I say: the absent and the addressed gathered, and the addressing prevailed because it is stronger and more firmly rooted than the absent.