Allah says in the Qur’an...

Allah says in the Qur’an: And We destroyed no township, but there was a known decree for it. No nation can outstrip its appointed time, nor can they lag behind. (2) Exactly the same thing is mentioned in the following verses: No nation can outstrip its appointed time, nor can they lag behind. (3) Have they not seen the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and what things Allah has created, and that it may be that their own term was nigh? In what report after that will they believe?

(4) The wording of the verses indicates that the appointed time which is nigh or about the nearness of which warning is being given, refers to the collective death of a society, not the individual death of its members, for all members of a nation do not normally die together. When the collective death of a person is mentioned, it means their social death, not their individual death. As we know individually people die at different times.

But when we look at them as one group bound together in matters of justice and injustice, prosperity and misery, then they have one appointed time of death. This social death is the death of a nation. In this sense the following verse is closely linked with the verse preceding it: Your Lord is Forgiver, full of Mercy. If He were to take them to task, for what they earn, He would hasten on the doom for them; but they have an appointed term from which they will find no escape. And those townships!

We destroyed them when they did wrong, and We appointed a fixed time for their destruction. (5) If Allah were to take mankind to task for their wrongdoing, He would not leave a single living creature on the face of the earth, but He reprieves them to an appointed time, and when their appointed time comes, they cannot put it off an hour nor can they advance it.

(6) If Allah were to take mankind to task for what they earned, He would not leave a living creature on the face of the earth; but He reprieves them to an appointed time, and when their term comes, then surely (they will know that) Allah is ever aware of His slaves. (7) In the last two verses the Qur’an says that if Allah wanted to take people to task during their lifetime, He would not leave a living creature and would destroy all people.

Difference Between Punishment in This Life and the Next Now there is a difficulty about this Qur’anic concept. As we know, all people are never unjust. There may be Prophets, Imams and their executors living among them.