32. As-Sajdah Page 416 وَ لَوْ And if تَرٰۤی you (could) see اِذِ when الْمُجْرِمُوْنَ the criminals نَاكِسُوْا (will) hang رُءُوْسِهِمْ their heads عِنْدَ before رَبِّهِمْ ؕ their Lord رَبَّنَاۤ Our Lord اَبْصَرْنَا we have seen وَ سَمِعْنَا and we have heard فَارْجِعْنَا so return us نَعْمَلْ we will do صَالِحًا righteous (deeds) اِنَّا Indeed we مُوْقِنُوْنَ (are now) certain وَ لَوْ And if شِئْنَا We (had) willed لَاٰتَیْنَا surely We (would) have given كُلَّ every نَفْسٍ soul هُدٰىهَا its guidance وَ لٰكِنْ but حَقَّ (is) true الْقَوْلُ the Word مِنِّیْ from Me لَاَمْلَـَٔنَّ that I will surely fill جَهَنَّمَ Hell مِنَ with الْجِنَّةِ the jinn وَ النَّاسِ and the men اَجْمَعِیْنَ together فَذُوْقُوْا So taste بِمَا because نَسِیْتُمْ you forgot لِقَآءَ (the) meeting یَوْمِكُمْ (of) this Day of yours هٰذَا ۚ (of) this Day of yours اِنَّا Indeed, We نَسِیْنٰكُمْ have forgotten you وَ ذُوْقُوْا And taste عَذَابَ (the) punishment الْخُلْدِ (of) eternity بِمَا for what كُنْتُمْ you used (to) تَعْمَلُوْنَ do اِنَّمَا Only یُؤْمِنُ believe بِاٰیٰتِنَا in Our Verses الَّذِیْنَ those who اِذَا when ذُكِّرُوْا they are reminded بِهَا of them خَرُّوْا fall down سُجَّدًا prostrating وَّ سَبَّحُوْا and glorify بِحَمْدِ (the) praises رَبِّهِمْ (of) their Lord وَ هُمْ and they لَا are not arrogant یَسْتَكْبِرُوْنَ۩ are not arrogant تَتَجَافٰی Forsake جُنُوْبُهُمْ their sides عَنِ from الْمَضَاجِعِ (their) beds یَدْعُوْنَ they call رَبَّهُمْ their Lord خَوْفًا (in) fear وَّ طَمَعًا ؗ and hope وَّ مِمَّا and out of what رَزَقْنٰهُمْ We have provided them یُنْفِقُوْنَ they spend فَلَا And not تَعْلَمُ knows نَفْسٌ a soul مَّاۤ what اُخْفِیَ is hidden لَهُمْ for them مِّنْ of قُرَّةِ (the) comfort اَعْیُنٍ ۚ (for) the eyes جَزَآءًۢ (as) a reward بِمَا for what كَانُوْا they used (to) یَعْمَلُوْنَ do اَفَمَنْ Then is one who كَانَ is مُؤْمِنًا a believer كَمَنْ like (him) who كَانَ is فَاسِقًا ؔؕ defiantly disobedient لَا Not یَسْتَوٗنَ they are equal اَمَّا As for الَّذِیْنَ those who اٰمَنُوْا believe وَ عَمِلُوا and do الصّٰلِحٰتِ righteous deeds فَلَهُمْ then for them جَنّٰتُ (are) Gardens الْمَاْوٰی ؗ (of) Refuge نُزُلًۢا (as) hospitality بِمَا for what كَانُوْا they used (to) یَعْمَلُوْنَ do وَ اَمَّا But as for الَّذِیْنَ those who فَسَقُوْا are defiantly disobedient فَمَاْوٰىهُمُ then their refuge النَّارُ ؕ (is) the Fire كُلَّمَاۤ Every time اَرَادُوْۤا they wish اَنْ to یَّخْرُجُوْا come out مِنْهَاۤ from it اُعِیْدُوْا they (will) be returned فِیْهَا in it وَ قِیْلَ and it (will) be said لَهُمْ to them ذُوْقُوْا Taste عَذَابَ (the) punishment النَّارِ (of) the Fire الَّذِیْ which كُنْتُمْ you used (to) بِهٖ [in it] تُكَذِّبُوْنَ deny 32. As-Sajdah Page 417 وَ لَنُذِیْقَنَّهُمْ And surely We will let them taste مِّنَ of الْعَذَابِ the punishment الْاَدْنٰی the nearer دُوْنَ before الْعَذَابِ the punishment الْاَكْبَرِ the greater لَعَلَّهُمْ so that they may یَرْجِعُوْنَ return وَ مَنْ And who اَظْلَمُ (is) more unjust مِمَّنْ than (he) who ذُكِّرَ is reminded بِاٰیٰتِ of (the) Verses رَبِّهٖ (of) his Lord ثُمَّ then اَعْرَضَ he turns away عَنْهَا ؕ from them اِنَّا Indeed We مِنَ from الْمُجْرِمِیْنَ the criminals مُنْتَقِمُوْنَ۠ (will) take retribution
(32:12) Would22 that you could see the guilty standing before their Lord with their heads downcast, (saying to Him): “Our Lord, we have now seen and heard, so send us back (to the world) that we might act righteously. For now we have come to have firm faith.”
(32:13) (They will be told): “If We had so willed, We could have bestowed guidance on every person.23 But the Word from Me that I will fill Hell with men and jinn,24 all together, has been fulfilled.
(32:14) So taste the chastisement on account of your forgetting the encounter of this Day.25 We, too, have forgotten you. Taste the eternal chastisement as a requital for your misdeeds.”
(32:15) None believes in Our Signs except those who, when they are given good counsel through Our verses, fall down prostrate and celebrate the praise of their Lord and do not wax proud.26
(32:16) Their sides forsake their beds, and they call upon their Lord in fear and hope,27 and expend (in charity) out of the sustenance We have granted them.28
(32:17) No one knows what delights of the eyes are kept hidden for them as a reward for their deeds.29
(32:18) Would a true believer be like him who was an evil-doer?30 Surely they are not equal.31
(32:19) As for those who believe and act righteously, theirs shall be Gardens to dwell in,32 a hospitality to reward them for their deeds.
(32:20) As for the evil-doers, their refuge shall be the Fire. Every time they want to escape from it they shall be driven back and shall be told: “Taste the chastisement of the Fire which you used to reject as a lie.”
(32:21) We shall certainly have them taste some chastisement in this world in addition to the greater chastisement (of the Hereafter); perhaps they will retract (from their transgression).33
(32:22) And who is more unjust than he who is given good counsel through the Signs of his Lord and yet he turns away from them?34 Surely We will exact full retribution from such criminals.
22. The reference here is to the spectacle of the Hereafter when the human ego, after returning to the Lord, will stand before Him to face reckoning.
23. Had it been in God’s scheme of things to direct man to the Right Way after making him directly observe and experience the reality of the Hereafter, it would not have been necessary to put him through a long series of trials and tribulations in this world. In God’s scheme of things, however, it was necessary that man should be tested while the ultimate reality is hidden from him, and remains beyond the ken of his perception.
The reason being that man is expected to recognize the truth as a result of reflecting on God's Signs in his own being and in the Universe around him. God assists him in this regard by sending Messengers and Scriptures so that he is tested as to whether he avails himself of the guidance so sent him.
He is also tested on another count: this being whether, after knowing the truth, he is able to exercise due control over his baser self and remain free from the bondage of desires and worldly interests so as to accept the truth and mold his conduct accordingly. If he fails in these tests there would be no point in putting him to the same tests again. If he were sent back to the world after having witnessed the Day of Judgement and the Reckoning at first hand, he would in fact not be put to any test at all. Likewise, if his mind is purged of all that he had observed and he is returned to the world while the larger reality is still hidden from him, he will perform exactly as he did before, and the result is bound to be the same. (For further elaboration see Towards Understanding the Qur’an, Vol. 1, al-Baqarah 2: n. 228, pp. 163-164; Vol. II, al-An ‘am 6: nn. 6 and 141, pp. 217- 218 and 297-298; Vol. IV, al-Ra‘d 13, p. 218 and al-Hijr 15: n. 39, pp. 297-298; Vol. IV, Yunus 10: n. 26, pp. 24-25, and Vol. VI, al-Mu'minun 23: n. 91, p. 125.
24. The allusion here is to God’s address to Iblis at the time of Adam’s creation. The account in Siirah Sad 38: vv. 65 ff. which narrates the whole story of Adam’s creation mentions that Iblis refused to prostrate himself before Adam and sought respite till the Last Day during which time he would try to mislead Adam’s progeny. In response, God told him: “This is the truth - and I only speak the truth —I will certainly fil! Hell with you and with all those among them who follow you”, (Sad 38:84-85).
Here the word ajma‘in (all) is used. This does not mean, however, that all men and jinn will be hurled into Hell. What is rather stated is that devils and those human beings who follow them will all be consigned to Hell.
25. Engrossed in worldly pleasures as the unbelievers are, they completely forget that a day will come when they will have to return to their Lord.
26. The believers stand out for abjuring erroneous ideas and readily accepting God’s directives and humbly serving Him.
27. Rather than immerse themselves in an orgy of pleasures in the watches of the night, the believers devote themselves to worshipping their Lord. They are unlike those who need long nocturnal sessions of singing, dancing and entertainment of different kinds to get over the strains of their working days. By contrast, after they have worked hard to perform their duties during the day, they spend their nights in remembering and worshipping their Lord; they quiver for fear of Him, concentrate all their hopes in Him. The words “their sides forsake their beds” does not mean that they never go to sleep at night. The point is rather that they devote a good portion of the night to worshipping God.
28. The word “sustenance” in this context obviously means lawful, wholesome sustenance. Unlawfully earned sustenance is not reckoned in the Qur’an as sustenance granted by God.
Another distinguishing feature of believers is that they expend in charity out of the lawful sustenance bestowed on them by God, be it large or small. The believers never spend beyond what they have lawfully earned and refrain from having recourse to unlawful earnings to meet their needs.
29. The following hadith was narrated by Abu Hurayrah from the Prophet (peace be on him) and can be found in the Hadith collections" of Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi and in the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal through several different chains of narration. “The Messenger of God said: God says: ‘I have prepared for My pious servants what no eye has ever seen, nor any ear ever heard, nor any man ever imagirted’.” (See. Bukhari, K. al-Tawhid, Bab: Yuriduna an yubaddilu Kalam Allah; Muslim, K al-Jannah ..., Bab: Sifat al-Jannah; Tirmidi, K. (Abwab) Tafsir al-Qur’an, Bab: Wa min Surat al-Sajdah; Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Musnad, vol. 2, p. 313 — Ed.) A tradition embodying the same content but with slight verbal variations was narrated by Abu Sa ‘id al-Khudri, Mughirah ibn Shu bah and Sahl ibn Sa‘d al-Sa‘id, and is recorded by Muslim, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ibn Jarir al-Tabari and Tirmidhi. (See Muslim, K. al-Jannah, Bab: Sifat al-Jannah; Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Musnad, vol. 5, p. 334; Tabari, Tafsir, K. al-Tafsir, Bab: Wa min Surat al-Sajdah. Ed.)
30. In this verse, the Qur’an employs two mutually opposed expressions: “those who believe and act righteously” and “the evil-doers”.
The people of the first group accept God as their Lord and sole deity and obey the law transmitted through His Messengers. By contrast, the evil-doers follow the path of rebellion, arrogate to themselves the right to behave as they please, and are prone to obey others than God.
31. The thought patterns and ways of living of the two groups are markedly different in this world. In like manner, the treatment that will be meted out to each of them by God in the Hereafter will be different.
32. For the believers, the Gardens of Paradise will not serve the purpose of occasional promenade; they will rather be the places where they will dwell forever.
33, “The greater chastisement” here refers to the chastisement to which the unbelievers and evil-doers will be subjected in the World-to-Come.
The verse, however, also speaks of “some chastisement” in this world, which refers to things like serious diseases, death of kith and kin, tragic accidents, and losses and failures of various types which people face in the course of their worldly lives. There are also storms, earthquakes, floods, epidemics, famines, riots, warfare’s and other calamities which befall a people collectively, sometimes affecting the lives of millions.
These calamities afflict people in order that they may take heed before the greater chastisement overtakes them. They should give up those patterns of thought and action that lead them to the immense chastisement of the Hereafter. In other words, God has not made man’s life in the world to be spent without care and concern. Man has not been granted an altogether smooth sail in this life. Calamities visit him so that he may purge his mind of the delusion that there is no power above him capable of causing harm.
God has so arranged the order of things in the world that individuals, nations and countries are periodically afflicted with devastating calamities in order to remind them of their utter helplessness and to impress upon them that there exists a pervasive supreme. power.
They are thus made to realize that their destiny is controlled by someone else other than themselves. This real power and authority rests with God, not with man. Whenever any calamity from God strikes man it becomes evident that he can neither avert it himself nor by invoking any jinn, spirit, or god. Far from being simply natural disasters, these calamities serve as warnings from God to dispel man’s misperceptions and prompt him to recognize the reality of things. By deriving lessons from these, man can mend his ways during his existence by embracing right beliefs and reforming his conduct. This alone will save him from the greater chastisement of the Hereafter.
34. “The Signs of the Lord” are quite pervasive and cover a pretty wide range. If one bears in mind the Qur’anic descriptions of these Signs, one will find they fall under the following six categories:
i. The Signs found in the wide expanses of the heavens and the earth and in the overall system underlying the workings of the Universe;
ii. The Signs manifest in man’s procreation, his structure, and his existence as a whole;
iii. The Signs found in man’s intuition, in his unconscious and subconscious, and in his moral conceptions;
iv. The Signs in the human experience of history.
v. The Signs manifest in the earthly and heavenly calamities that befall man, and
vi. Finally, the Signs that God has sent down through the agency of His Messengers in order to apprise man, in a reasonable and persuasive manner, of the truths that are corroborated by these Signs.
Taken together, these Signs consistently and emphatically impress upon man that he is neither without any God nor is he the servant of a multiplicity of gods. Rather, the only right course for him is to serve and worship the One True God. Furthermore, man has not been sent to this world as one who is absolutely free and unaccountable, as one endowed with the right to act as one pleases, nor as an irresponsible being accountable to no one. On the contrary, after man completes the term of his worldly life, he will return to his Lord with the record of his deeds to face God’s reckoning. Thereafter he will be rewarded or punished in light of his performance. Hence, it is in man’s own interest to follow the guidance sent to him by his Lord through His Prophets and as embodied in the Scriptures and to give up acting as though he were endowed with the right to act as he pleases.
Thus, all possible measures have been taken by God to direct man to the Right Way. The truth has been explained to him in a myriad of ways.
A whole range of Signs provide for his admonition. He has also been granted the faculties of sight, hearing and rational thinking. So if man then turns a blind eye to all these Signs, closes his ears to every instruction and admonition, and uses his head and heart to weave together warped philosophies of life, it would be no exaggeration to say that none is more criminal than man himself. Hence, when such a man returns to his Lord after completing his term of life, he certainly deserves a severe punishment for his rebellion.