“He (Abraham) said: ‘You have taken up idols instead of Allah as a bond of love among yourselves in the present life, but on the Day of Resurrection you will disown and curse one another. Your refuge shall be the Fire, and none will come to your aid’.”
(Al Qur’ān – 29:25)
The Prophet Abraham, it appears, would have addressed his people in these words only after he was miraculously saved from the fire. He means to say that the nucleus of their collective life was devotion to idols rather than to God. People can be brought together by any cause, gathering around both true and false beliefs as they do.
The unbelievers are told that their social structure, based as it is on a false proposition, will not endure in the Hereafter. The only bonds that will endure – bonds of friendship, cooperation, kinship, and reverential discipleship – will be those based on servitude to the One True God and on righteous conduct and piety. In the Next World, bonds rooted in unbelief, polytheism, misguidance and waywardness will cease to be; in fact, friendships in this world will turn into enmity. All those who are bound in devotion to those they revere will become enemies to one another. Father and son, husband and wife, and teacher and disciple will curse each other. Each of them will blame the other for his error and demand that the latter be given double the punishment for having misguided him.
The Qur’an also states this at other places like al-Zukhruf 43:67, al-A‘rāf 7:38 and al-Ahzāb 33:67-68).