Based on what criterion, does Allah grant guidance to His slaves? (Sealing Hearts, Free Will, Astray)

 Allah is powerfull. If God wants to guide someone, the person will be guided. If Allah wants that someone should remain astray, then no one can prevent him from destruction.

This is a commentry on Allah’s power. There is no authority who can question God about his decisions.

However, power is not the only characteristics of Allah. Allah is also just and merciful. However Allah is not accountable to anyone about delivering justice!

Human beings have been given limited free will. If someone uses that free will to try to reach Allah, he will be guided by Allah. If someone decides to ignore the message of Allah and prophets and pursues desires of this world; then he will be led astray by Allah. This is due to just nature of Allah.

When someone is guided, he should not be arrogant. The guidance has been granted to him from Allah! It is not something that the person has achieved. Allah may have given this guidance due to some effort on his part. But arrogance is a major sin and we need to be carefull.

When someone chooses path of arrogance, he is led astray by Allah.

Let us come to context of this verse. Some mockers of Islam came up with a weird argument to reject message of Allah.

They said that God is infinitely powerfull. Had God willed, we would have believed! So if we don’t believe, it is Allah’s decision that we won’t believe. Maybe God has sealed our heart to this message.

Allah doesn’t just seal the hearts of anybody.

Allah asks the musyrikin who keep committing shirk that whether they are firm on their decision to stay that way. Whether, no matter how many times the messenger comes to them, no matter how many times the ayats are recited to them, no matter how many signs are showed to them, do they still choose to deny and stay in their state of shirk?

If they still insists on their stubbornness, and it’s not something you wager back and forth, it’s a firm decision that they make, that they are never going to change, then Allah punishes them by sealing their hearts, and hence, they are never guided.