Tafsir of Ar-Rum 30:29

"But those who have wronged have followed..."

This constitutes a turning away from addressing them and attempting to guide them to the truth through providing parables, detailing the verses, employing sound rational premises, and demonstrating the impossibility of their adherence to the truth. It is as if it were said: They have not comprehended anything of the detailed verses; rather, they have followed "their [own] desires"—those that are deviant. The relative pronoun is used in place of their personal pronoun to record against them that, in this following, they are "wrongdoers"—placing things where they do not belong, or wronging their own souls by exposing them to eternal punishment—"without knowledge"; that is, ignorant of the falsehood of that to which they have turned and clung. No deterrent turns them away from it, unlike the one who is knowledgeable, who is deterred if he follows falsehood by his knowledge of its falsity.

"So who can guide whom Allah has sent astray?"—meaning: He created misguidance within them and made them its acquirers by their own choice.

"And for them"—that is, for those whom Allah Almighty has sent astray (the plural being used in consideration of the meaning)—"there are no helpers"—who could rescue them from misguidance or protect them from its consequences and calamities; this is in the sense that not a single one of them has a single helper, according to what is well-known regarding the correspondence of a plural to a plural. The word "min" (any) is added to emphasize the negation. The discourse is driven to console His Messenger, may Allah Almighty bless him and grant him peace, and serves as a preamble to the command given to him, peace and blessings be upon him, by His saying, Glorified is He: