The Cave
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE[18:20]
for, behold, if they should come to know of you, they might stone you to death or force you back to their faith – in which case you would never attain to any good!"

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* v.20 : During their “sleep,” time had stood still for the Men of the Cave, and so they assumed that the outside world had remained unchanged and was, as before, hostile to them. – At this point, the story as such ends abruptly (for, as we know, the Qur’ān is never concerned with narratives for their own sake) and is revealed in the sequence as an allegory of death and resurrection and of the relativity of “time” as manifested in man’s consciousness.