Overall meaning : Allah Almighty says: Can someone who was an unbeliever, doomed to destruction, wandering in the darkness of error, in utter confusion then We guided him to Islam, revived his heart with faith, and made for him a light by which he walks among people, the same as someone who is plunged in the darkness of unbelief from which he cannot emerge?
Just as the evil deeds of these unbelievers who argue with the believers about eating what Allah has forbidden are made to seem fair to them, so, too, the erroneous beliefs and the evil deeds of their likes who disbelieve in Allah and deny His signs are made to seem fair and right to them.
Also, just as He has made the wicked folk of Makkah, the Prophet’s city, its leaders who plot in it by calling people to unbelief and error and turning them away from Allah’s path, He, too, has set up in every city of the messengers before him its greatest wrongdoers to plot in it for the same purpose. But they scheme only against themselves and to their own harm, though they may not perceive it.
And when a conclusive sign comes to them from Allah attesting to the truth of the Prophet’s mission, they say, 'We will not believe until we are given the same message and miracles Allah’s Messengers are given.’ To this, Allah replies that the matter of choosing messengers to be entrusted with His message is something that He determines in accordance with His knowledge of who may well be trusted with it, as He best knows who is deemed appropriate for the task. Humiliation from Allah and a severe punishment, He warns, will soon befall these wrongdoers for their scheming against Islam and Muslims.
When Allah wishes to guide someone, He states, He opens his chest to Islam and makes him accept it; but when He wishes to lead someone astray, He makes his breast narrow and constricted as if he were climbing up into the sky, but to no avail. Just as Allah makes his chest narrow and constricted, so He sets Satan on him and his ilk, who refuse to believe in Allah and His Messenger, to mislead them and turn them away from the right way.
Then, addressing His Prophet, Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, He declares that what He has explained to him in this surah and in other surahs of the Qur’an is His path and religion, which He has approved and made straight, and that He has detailed the signs and arguments for the truthfulness of his message and Islam for those endowed with a sound understanding and a judicious mind and who comprehend what Allah and His Messenger convey to them and benefit from it. Theirs will be the Abode of Peace—Paradise—with their Lord, and He, Glorified be to Him, is their protector and supporter by virtue of their good deeds.