Surah Fatir 35:15-26 - Quran Translation Commentary

(35:18) And no bearer of burden shall carry the burden of another,²⁷ and if a heavily laden soul should call another to her burden, nothing of it will be borne, even though he be near of kin.²⁸ But you can warn only those who fear their Lord in the Unseen and perform the Prayer. And whosoever purified himself,²⁹ purifies for the sake of his own soul, and to Allah is the journey’s end.

(35:19) Not equal are the blind and the seeing.

(35:20) Nor the darknesses and the light.

(35:21) Nor the shade and the torrid heat.

(35:22) And not equal are the living and the dead.³⁰ Allah makes to hear whomsoever He will; you are not going to make hear those who are in the graves.³¹

(35:23) Surely, you are no more than a warner.

(35:24) We have indeed sent you with the truth, a bearer of glad tiding and a warner. And there has not been an Ummah but a warner has been among them.³²

(35:25) And if they give you the lie, then those who were before them also gave the lie; messengers came to them with clear signs, with Scriptures and the illuminating Book.

(35:26) Then I seized those who disbelieved, so how (terrible) was My disapproval!

Commentary

26. Allah is the Self-sufficient, the Praiseworthy: If someone construes the idea that Allah is “Al-Ghaniyy” in the material sense, then the attribute “Al-Hamid” offers the correction that Allah is Praiseworthy by Himself, independent of praise. If the creations have been asked to chant His praises, it is to establish His greatness and love in their hearts and minds (Au.).

27. This does not contradict the verse which says (29: 13)i.e., “They shall surely carry their own loads, and loads besides their own loads” because, the allusion in this verse is to the sin of misleading others (Alusi).

28. (We have a hadith of Sahih status coming from the Prophet directly on this topic: Au.). It has been preserved in Tirmidhi, Abu Da’ud, Sa`id b. Mansur, Nasa’i, Ibn Marduwayh and Bayhaqi in his Sunan. It is as follows: Abu Rimthah reports: “I was in the company of my father as we walked up to the Prophet. The Prophet asked my father: ‘Is this your son?’ He replied, ‘Yes, by the Lord of the Ka`bah. It is the truth, I testify.‘ The Prophet smiled at my likeness with my father, and at my father’s swearing. Then he added, ‘Well, you will not be held responsible for any of his misdeed, nor he for any of your misdeed.’ Then he recited this verse, ‘And no bearer of burden will carry the burden of another’” (Shawkani).

`Ikrimah commented that a father will go to his son, remind him of his past good deeds and then request him for a single good deed or take away a single evil deed from him in order to lighten his burden. But the son will refuse. He will try his wife, his friends, and others, but no one will be ready to offer any relief, on grounds that although he was seeking something pretty simple, they feared the same thing as he feared (Qurtubi).

The above report is in Ibn Abi Hatim; as Allah (swt) said (80: 35-37), “On the Day when man will flee from his brother; his mother and father; his wife and children; for every man that day will be an affair that will occupy him (wholly)” - Ibn Kathir.

Asad adds: “Thus, any transfer of moral responsibility from one person to another is shown to be impossible. Whereas the first part of the above statement implies a negation of the Christian doctrine of ‘original sin’ with which mankind is supposedly burdened, the second part categorically refutes the doctrine of the ‘vicarious atonement’ of that sin by Jesus Christ.”

29. That is, he who purified himself of the filth of disbelief, Association, worship of other than Allah, and lived a righteous life (Au.).

30. This is a comparison between a believer and an unbeliever at the spiritual level (Ibn Jarir).

Undeniably, spiritual qualities have their effects. We find Qatadah saying, as Ibn Jarir notes, “A believer is alive: alive of sight, alive of intention, alive in deeds. In contrast, an unbeliever is dead: dead of sight, dead of heart and dead in deeds.”

The ayah is in the same vein as (6: 122),“What? Can one who was dead, then We gave him life and appointed a Light whereby he strides among the people, be like he who is in darknesses out of which he cannot emerge? Thus We have decked out fair for the unbelievers what they do.”

Or (11: 24) “The likeness of the two groups is like the blind and the deaf, and the seeing and hearing. Are they equal in likeness? Will you not receive admonition?” – Ibn Kathir.

Sayyid adds: “Not equal are the blind and the seeing; nor the darknesses and the light; nor the shade and the torrid heat; and not equal are the living and the dead: There is commonality between the natures of disbelief and of blindness, darkness, heat and death; as there is commonality between the natures of faith and light, sight, shade and life.

“Faith is light: it is light in the heart, light in limbs, and light in senses and feelings. It is a light that shows the truth of the things, values, and events, and how they are related. A believer sees with the help of this light – Allah’s own light – and thus sees the truth of the things and knows how to interact with them so that he is not obfuscated on the way, nor staggers as he advances (toward his goal).

“Faith is sight that sees. It experiences the true seeing, neither loosened nor disjointed. It leads its master on to a bright path, endowed with confidence and sense of satisfaction.

“Faith is a deep shade under which the soul finds comfort, and the heart its contentment. It is the shade from which doubts, skepticism and perplexity have departed.

“And faith is life: life of the heart and feelings; life in the objectives and directions; as it is also the name of constructive activities, fruitful, well-aimed, without any dullness or cooling of passions, neither any indulgence nor wastefulness.

“Disbelief on the other hand is blindness: blindness in the heart, blindness from seeing the evidences of truth, blindness from the ability to see the truth, and the true relationships, truth in values, in men, in events and in things in general.

“Disbelief is darkness - indeed, darknesses. When people are distanced from the light of faith, they fall into the pits of darknesses of a variety of kinds that prevent them from seeing the reality of great many things around them.

“Disbelief is intensive heat. It enflames the heart with the flames of perplexity, anxiety and instability; and lack of sense of surety with regard to activities and ultimate purposes. It leads directly to the flames of Hellfire, to the scorching heat of the chastisement.

“Disbelief is death: deadness of the conscience. It is severance from the sources of true life and severance from the path that leads to the ultimate purposes. It results in the inability to do the right things and to respond to those that are the sources of Truth.”

31. That is, they are spiritually as dead as those in the grave (Qurtubi).

32. If it is asked, writes Zamakhshari, has there been any warner between (the five to six hundred) years that elapsed between `Isa (asws) and our Prophet?, the answer is, so long as traces of a previous Prophet’s warnings are present in a people, one can say they have had their warner. (What Zamakhshari meant is, so long as the Message of a previous Prophet remains uncorrupted amongst a people, it can be said that they were not without a warner: Au.).

For a detailed discussion of this issue one might refer to Surah Yunus, note 7##6. We reproduce its summary here: “Two points may be noted in this connection. First, a single Prophet is enough for any land – beyond his own - to which his message reaches. Second, no new Prophet need be raised so long as the message of a previous Prophet remains in them, uncorrupted. It is logically not necessary that a new Prophet should be raised in every land, among every generation of people.”