Surah Al-Fajr English Translation & Brief Tafsir

¹O polytheists, who associate partners with Allah, accept certain beings as intercessors besides Him, and refuse to accept Muhammad’s prophethood! By the dawn, which breaks through the darkness of the night of disbelief and ignorance and brings the good news of the bright future that awaits the believers.

²And by that night on which the Quran, sent to bring people out of darkness into light, began to be revealed, and by the excitement felt during the last ten nights among which that night falls.

³And by every pair created as opposites, like male and female, night and day, and by the One, Allah, who created them all and has no equal or likeness.

⁴And by the night as it passes away to give way to the light of faith and the Quran, and then heralds the morning…

⁵In all this, is there not a testimony, full of lessons and counsel, for people of understanding who reflect: that darkness does not last, that after every night a morning will come, and after every winter a spring? Of course there is. Allah did not create human beings without reason or in vain; whoever uses his reason and reflects will understand and grasp that he was not created for nothing. Know that the wrongdoers of the past who, just like you, oppressed the believers were destroyed by Allah. Well then, will you not look at what happened to them and learn a lesson?

⁶O Prophet! Listen also to the testimony of history! For your Lord is giving you examples. Have you not seen what your Lord did to the people of ‘Ad, who were hostile to the prophet Hud and were endowed with vineyards and gardens?

⁷What had He done to the city of Iram, the pride of the people of ‘Ad, adorned with towers soaring to the sky and lofty pillars?

⁸That city of Iram was a city adorned with such magnificent blessings and beauties that nothing like it had been created in any land in the history of humankind. Nor was there any other people that could measure up to them.

⁹And what did He do to the people of Thamud, who carved out the rocks in the valleys and built themselves secure palaces from those rocks, and who, growing arrogant in that security and overstepping all bounds, were hostile to the prophet Salih?

¹⁰Remember, too, the dictator Pharaoh, who drove pyramids into the earth like stakes, as though he were going to remain in the world forever. Pharaoh, who made his command of mighty armies a source of arrogance, ruled people by his own laws, enslaved them, and saw himself as a god set above his people. Reflect, too, on what your Lord did to Pharaoh, who stood against the prophet Moses with all his might.

¹¹So Allah punished them all and destroyed them. Spoiled by power and wealth, they had become tyrannical in the lands where they held dominion, trampling over the bounds of right and justice. For they had rejected the call to live by the order and morality that are the reason for their creation, and had defied Allah’s rulings. Thus, overstepping all bounds, each of them had become a taghut, a false authority, making people submit to him through laws he himself had laid down.

¹²Regarding every kind of immorality as legitimate, they divided people, whom Allah created equal, into classes and made some of them the slaves of others; and so they spread much corruption and oppression there. Truly, the corrupters of our own day learn nothing from the past either. Do those who do injustice, who divide people into classes, and who steal people’s rights not know what We did to those like them in the past?

¹³They never gave up their transgression, insolence, shirk, and disbelief. That is why your Lord poured down calamities upon them as a scourge of punishment. He punished them with the torment they deserved: ‘Ad with a raging windstorm, Thamud with a terrible quake, and Pharaoh by drowning him in the sea together with his army. Their power, their wealth, and their armies could not save them. The wrongdoing peoples who come after them will also be punished with many similar calamities.

¹⁴Your Lord, who is aware of everything the peoples of the past did, lets no one get away with what he has done. Surely He is always watching what you do as well.

¹⁵But man is so ungrateful that he never learns from the past. Whenever his Lord puts him through a trial to test him, honors him with blessings such as health, wealth, and power, and bestows blessings on him in abundance, man forgets that these are a test and at once says, “My Lord has given me what I deserve,” and, regarding it as a privilege, grows arrogant.

¹⁶But whenever He tests him by taking back some of the blessings He gave and restricts his provision, he at once falls into despair and starts complaining. In words that overstep all bounds he says, “My Lord has not valued me; He has wronged me and humiliated me,” and, laying the blame on Allah, he rises up in rebellion. Yet it is Allah who gives provision and Allah who takes it away; plenty and want are both a test. These people, who take wealth as a sign of being valued in Allah’s sight, see their possession of wealth and power as proof that they are on the right path, and regard poor believers as misguided people deprived of divine favor.

¹⁷No! The truth is that Allah possesses boundless grace, mercy, and justice. But, O ungrateful ones, you do not act in ways that would earn it. In truth, you expect Allah to give you everything you ask of Him. Yet you do not protect and look after the orphan who has no one, and you always shy away from giving him his due for Allah’s sake.

¹⁸Calling the wealth Allah has entrusted to you “mine,” you do not urge one another to feed the poor and meet their needs.

¹⁹You forget that the authority to determine what is lawful and unlawful belongs to Allah alone, and with great greed, without regard for lawful or unlawful, you devour the rights of the orphans and the poor who have shares in the inheritance.

²⁰Because you have made wealth the sole aim of life, love of possessions has blinded you. With your passion for hoarding, how intensely you love worldly goods and money! The wealth and property to which one is bound unconditionally, and for whose sake Allah’s rulings are trampled, become a person’s true god. Well then, this being so, how can you regard yourselves as being on the right path?

²¹No, this will not go on like this! The wealth and property you love almost to the point of worship will be of no use to you in the Hereafter, and you will give account for all of it, one by one. When will this reckoning be, you ask? When the earth is shattered to pieces by violent quakes, everything people built in the world will be turned upside down! Everything born of their weakness for worldly goods, and all the riches they amassed by devouring the rights of others, will be scattered to the winds! All of you will come into the presence of your Lord.

²²When your Lord’s command comes, His sovereignty will be made manifest in all its majesty. The angels will be lined up, rank upon rank, to carry out Allah’s commands. Then the polytheists who did not recognize His rule while they were in the world will see with their own eyes that the one and only true Ruler is Allah alone.

²³On that day Hell will be brought, in all its terror, before the wrongdoers who paid no heed to the warning even though they had been warned. On that day man will remember everything he did in the world and everything he should have done but did not, and will understand that the wealth he hoarded almost to the point of worship has been of no use to him. But this belated understanding and regret will be of no use to him at all. Deceived by their position, their power, and their wealth in the world, they paid no heed to the warnings given to them through the Quran. What is more, though they claimed to believe in Allah, they opposed Allah’s laws and, by not following His path, lived a life of hypocrisy.

²⁴Faced with this scene, that ungrateful man will remember the chances he missed in the world and cry out in regret: “Oh, if only I had listened to the counsel and followed the call made in Allah’s name! If only, while I had the chance, I had submitted to my Lord’s rulings, given Allah’s due from my wealth to the orphan and the poor, and so prepared in advance for my life here!”

²⁵Now it is too late. Truly, the life of this world is over, and no new chance will be given to man. On that day no one can punish as Allah will punish the polytheists and the disbelievers.

²⁶And no one can escape this punishment or prevent the punishment that will be inflicted. No one can bind with chains as He will bind. The punishment awaiting those who persecute the believers will be many times worse than the persecution they inflicted on the believers in the world. This, then, is the fate that awaits those who turn away from the Quran.

²⁷But to those who submitted to Allah’s call, fulfilled their responsibilities, and so completed their life in this world, it will be said on that day: “O you whose heart, by living the values you believed in, has been filled with revelation and has found peace!

²⁸Because in the world you kept away from deeds that do not please Allah, now that death has come, return to the spiritual presence of your Lord, well pleased with Him and He well pleased with you.

²⁹Truly, you turned to your Lord and prayed, ‘My Lord! Place me among Your righteous servants with whom You are pleased!’ And true to the prayer you made, you followed Our laws with faith! You did good on earth and did no one wrong! Now, as My reward to you: Come, join My chosen servants, who order their lives by their Lord’s laws alone and submit to no one’s rule but their Lord’s.

³⁰Now, as My reward, enter Paradise together with those chosen servants of Mine, and attain its matchless blessings…” And so it will have become plain that in the Hereafter Allah is pleased with them and they are pleased with Allah… O people! Come, while there is still time, you too join the believers, the people of tawhid, who serve Allah alone.