Day 12 | Ayat 13 | Increased in Guidance

The Quran is about one third stories and while it is not a storybook, Quran is a book of guidance and warning, Allah does use stories to teach and remind us. Surah Kahf contains four stories and in the first, we learn of a group of youth, young men, who lived in a time and place where adherence to the religion of the state was mandatory. Allah begins this ayat with ‘We narrate’ and includes ‘in Truth’ providing us insight that the previous stories told of the people of the cave contradict one another and have variations within them. Allah reveals the final definitive truth about the young men and the events leading to and after their time in the cave. The story is of great interest but more so, the narrator, Allah, is of greater interest. We learn that the youth were already rightly guided when they rejected gods other than Allah, but then Allah increased them in guidance. This indicates that Iman may be increased and Tafsir Ibn Kathir sites several ayats in the Quran showing how Iman may go up and down.