Surah Al-Isra: Thematic English Translation (Mustafa Çevik)

Allah the Exalted, whose knowledge and power are boundless, took His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque (al-Masjid al-Haram) to the Farthest Mosque (al-Masjid al-Aqsa), whose surroundings He has blessed, in order to show him some of His signs. Without doubt Allah sees and hears everything and has power to do all that He wills.

We also made Moses (taking him by night) a recipient of revelation. We gave him the Book and, making known that none but Allah is to be taken as guardian (wakil), made it a guide for the Children of Israel.

O you who are descended from those We carried with Noah in the ship! Do not forget that your forefather Noah, too, was a servant who called people to these truths and was most thankful to his Lord.

In the Book We also made this known to the Children of Israel: paying no heed to Our warnings, turning your backs on the system of life to which you were invited, and growing arrogant and unruly, you have twice spread corruption on earth.

When the time of the first warning came because of your unruliness and rebellion, We sent against you servants of Ours who were very strong and aggressive; they entered your land to destroy you, went from house to house, plundered every nook and corner, and burned and razed everything. This is the law Allah has laid down for those who pay no heed to the warnings given.

After a while, so that you might draw the necessary lessons and set yourselves right, We enabled you to prevail over your enemies, increased your numbers by granting you children and wealth, and once more reminded you of this basic rule: “If you follow the call being made in Allah’s name and take on the morality He sets out, you will see the benefit of it and will have done good to yourselves; but if you say, ‘We will go our own way and shape our own order and morality ourselves,’ and rebel and revolt against your Lord, you will do harm to yourselves and bring on the time of the second warning too.” And indeed, when you disregarded this warning too, your honor and standing were trampled underfoot by your enemies a second time; as before, they entered your temple and smashed to pieces everything they seized.

O Children of Israel! If you draw the necessary lessons from these things and turn to your Lord’s call, your Lord will treat you with compassion and mercy. But if you again set about going your own way and return to tyranny and corruption, We too will return to punishment. Do not forget that for such people there is also a most severe punishment in Hell.

The truth is that this Quran being sent down guides whoever wishes to the one right path, and gives the believers who strive to live by it the good news that their reward will be very great.

And to those who do not believe that they will receive in the Hereafter the recompense for what they did in their worldly lives, it gives news that a dreadful punishment awaits them. The human being is very hasty; saying of the punishment he has been told of, “Bring it now, and let us see,” he asks for evil as though he were asking for good.

We have also made the night and the day two signs. By the order We have established and the law that accords with it, We bring the sign of the day after the sign of the night, so that you may seek your share of the blessings your Lord grants, and also know the number of the years that pass and grasp that in the end the Day of Reckoning will arrive. Just as night follows day, so the life of the Hereafter follows the life of this world. To help you grasp these truths, We explain everything clearly and with examples.

We have made every human being’s destiny depend on his own effort. On the Day of Reckoning We will hang around his neck and set before him his record, in which every action of his has been recorded down to the finest detail, and on That Day We will say to him, “Read your record, then; today you yourself are enough to settle your own account.”

Whoever chooses the system of life that is Allah’s call and makes every effort to live by it does so for his own good. And whoever turns away from Allah’s call does himself the greatest harm. No one will bear another’s burden of sin or lift another’s punishment.

Nor does Allah punish a community until He has sent a prophet.

When a community, despite being warned with Allah’s verses, persists in living turned away from them and comes to deserve punishment, then before destroying that community We call its elite, the leaders grown spoiled in prosperity, with Our final warnings to live on the right path. If even then they carry on in their unruliness, destruction by punishment becomes inevitable for that community.

So it was that after Noah, too, We destroyed many communities for this reason, for Allah is aware of whom His servants live for and by what standard.

Whoever chases after the pleasures, delights, wealth, fame, and glory of the life of this world, seeking only what is passing, and writes off the Hereafter, We give to whomever of them We will as much of this world as We will, but in the end We cast him into Hell, banished and condemned.

And whoever seeks the beauties of the life of Paradise in the Hereafter, where one abides forever, and strives to live an Allah-centered life will attain the finest reward in Allah’s sight.

To both those who seek this world and those who seek the life of the Hereafter We give a taste of the blessings of this world without distinction, for your Lord’s blessings are for you all and enough for you all.

We have made some people superior to others in wealth, property, and abilities; but do not forget that this is a test; true superiority and wealth are what is lasting in the Hereafter, and that is what is truly valuable.

O human being! Do not be deceived by the passing goods of this brief worldly life into taking others besides Allah as gods for the sake of their wealth, property, fame, and glory, or you will be condemned to be cast, reproached and forsaken, into a corner of Hell. For your Lord has created you to live in guidance. So obey Him alone.

And treat your mother and father with kindness; if one or both of them grow old in your care, never say so much as ‘ugh’ to them, nor scold them; speak to them with words that soothe the heart, be humble toward them both, take them under the wing of your mercy, and say: “My Lord! Just as they nourished and raised me with love and tenderness when I was small, so treat them with Your mercy and tenderness.”

O people! Your Lord knows best what is within you. If you repent of your shirk and disbelief, turn wholeheartedly to His call, and do righteous deeds, He will forgive you.

Give your relatives their due; give the destitute and the stranded traveler their due too, and do not withhold your help; but do not squander either! Allah does not love the wasteful; those who squander wastefully become the brothers and companions of Satan, and Satan is most ungrateful to his Lord.

If, because you yourself are in straits and hardship and are waiting for help to come from your Lord, you cannot reach out to one in need, then at least speak to them words that comfort the heart; and keep away both from tight-fisted miserliness and from spending without measure, squandering right and left for no reason! If you do not do so and keep within these bounds, in the end you will be thrown into a corner, condemned, and left writhing.

Without doubt your Lord tests people by giving provision in abundance to whom He wills and sparingly to whom He wills. He sees and knows best how His servants use these.

Do not kill your children either, out of fear and anxiety that you will not be able to provide for them, for it is We who will provide for both them and you; killing them is a very great crime.

And do not even go near adultery or fornication, for it is a most shameful indecency and an evil way.

Do not take a life Allah has made inviolable except for a just cause; whoever is killed unjustly, We have given his next of kin authority regarding retaliation (qisas); but let him not exceed the limits in this, nor go beyond the prescribed penalty; for by being given this authority he has already been given the help he needs.

Do not touch the property of the orphan until he reaches adulthood, except to put it to good use on his behalf. Keep the promises you make, for a promise places responsibility on the one who gives it.

In your buying and selling, give full measure and weigh true; do not let fraud and dishonesty creep into your trade!

Do not pursue things of which you have no knowledge, for the eye, the ear, the heart, and every limb will be called to account for it.

Nor walk on the earth in arrogance and conceit, for by doing so you can neither split the earth nor reach the mountains in height.

All these wrong behaviors are things your Lord does not look on with favor. These warnings are among your Lord’s commands, to be obeyed by the believers who believe in the system of life that is your Lord’s call and strive to live it and to keep it alive.

Never take other gods alongside Allah, or you will be among those who enter Hell, banished.

Those who associate partners with Allah, shamelessly and without relying on any knowledge or proof, even go so far as to make a monstrous and dreadful attribution, saying, “The angels are Allah’s daughters.”

While We have made plain in the Quran that it is Allah who created both male and female, that He is free of every kind of imperfection, and that He has never taken a child, their claiming sons for themselves and regarding the angels as Allah’s daughters is nothing but a sign that those who associate partners with Allah do not know Allah as He deserves, nor wish to know Him.

O Prophet! Say: “Had there been other gods alongside Allah, there would be no such perfect order in the universe that Allah has created and whose order He has established; each of them would set about laying down laws of its own and cause chaos.”

Allah, beyond and above what they say, is the One Exalted.

The seven heavens, the earth, and all that is in them are among the proofs of Allah’s boundless knowledge, power, and greatness. All of them plainly show that they continue their existence in keeping with the reason for their creation; they glorify Him (tasbih) and point to Allah’s greatness; yet most of you persist in not seeing and understanding this. Even so, Allah is in no haste to punish you, and grants you time enough to grasp the truth, for He is most merciful, and forgiving toward whoever turns from his error to what is right.

In the hearts of those who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth, and who also stubbornly persist in not believing in the Hereafter, there are, as it were, veils that prevent them from understanding the Quran, and in their ears there are plugs. Whenever you invite them to Allah’s way and say that there is no true god but Allah, they turn their backs and move away from you.

We know very well that some of those who deny the truth only appear to be listening to you. And We witness them saying, when they confer among themselves, “If you follow what he says, you will be following a man bewitched.”

Are their straying and unruliness not already clear from their likening you to a sorcerer or a soothsayer? Because of their baseless and ugly attributions, cut off from the truth, they cannot find the right path.

And besides these comparisons they say, “What? After we have become a heap of bones and mixed with the soil, are we to be clothed again in flesh and bone and raised to life? Can such a thing be?”

Say to them: “Whether you turn to stone or iron, or to anything you can imagine and call impossible, know well that you will surely be raised to life again.” If after this they still ask, “And who might it be that will raise us again?” say to them, “He who created you the first time is the One who will raise you again.”

Thereupon those who associate partners with Allah will shake their heads mockingly and say, “Well then, when will this resurrection take place?” And you say to them, “I cannot know its time; who knows, perhaps it will take place very soon.”

When That Day comes, Allah, your Lord, will call you into His presence, and in the face of this truth you will answer the call, praising Him, and you will grasp the fact that you spent your worldly life frittering it away on empty, meaningless, worthless things.

O Prophet! Tell My believing servants to call people to live what is right with the finest of words, for Satan provokes and stirs up believers and those who associate partners with Allah against one another; do not give him this opportunity; without doubt Satan is an open and most formidable enemy to the human being.

It is your Lord who knows best who deserves what; He has pity and mercy on whoever is worthy, and punishes whoever deserves it.

We have not sent you to force people to accept the call.

Allah, who created all that is in the heavens and on the earth, knows best what He has created, and He alone knows, most truly, who deserves what.

Your Lord had granted each of the prophets different qualities and blessings. To David, along with kingship, He had given the Psalms (Zabur), laden with wisdom.

Say to those who turn away from the call made through the Quran: “Do you not see and consider that those to whom you ascribe godhood besides your Lord have no power to solve your problems, or to rescue you from hardship, or to ward off any harm that may come to you?”

In fact, those whom they take as gods themselves, when they are in trouble and hard pressed, beseech Allah, their Lord, ask Him for help in prayer, and fear His punishment; for your Lord’s punishment is most severe.

A community that stubbornly persists in denying the truth We either destroy before the Day of Resurrection or punish severely. This is Allah’s unchanging law.

The reason We do not send miracles in response to the demands of those who associate partners with Allah is that earlier communities, despite seeing miracles, did not accept the call. Indeed, as proof of Salih’s prophethood We granted his people a miraculous camel. And although they had been warned that if they harmed the camel they would be struck by Allah’s punishment, they slaughtered it mercilessly, wronged themselves, and were destroyed by punishment. Yet We had warned them with miracles and told them to beware of Our punishment.

O Prophet! Do not grieve at the needless demands of those who associate partners with Allah! Your Lord encompasses all people with His knowledge and power. We made what We showed you at the end of the Night Journey, and the tree of Zaqqum in Hell, cursed in the Quran, a test and a means of warning for people. But most of them swagger insolently, persist in not believing you or what the Quran relates, and grow ever more unruly.

When Allah said to the angels, “Be ready to serve Adam,” all the angels except Iblis showed, by prostrating to Allah, that they would obey the command; but Iblis, defying Allah’s command, did not prostrate, and rebelled against his Lord, saying, “I will not serve this creature of Yours whom You created from clay, nor show him respect.” He also said to Allah, “This human being whom You have held above me: if You grant me respite until the Day of Resurrection, I will prove what he is and how ungrateful he will be to You; I will lead most of them along behind me.”

Thereupon Allah called out to Iblis: “Get out of My presence; whoever of them follows you and tags along behind you, I will put you all together into Hell. So you will receive the recompense for your ingratitude and rebellion against Allah. Go on, then, lead astray with your whisperings whomever you can, and let us see; fall upon them with your horses, your chariots, and all your might; call them to associate partners with Allah and to sin through their wealth and children; make them baseless, deceitful promises; your promises are nothing but deception and beguilement.

O Iblis! Know well that your whisperings and false promises will have no effect on My servants who believe in Me wholeheartedly and hold fast to My call. You cannot overcome them or lead them along behind you, for they will be under the protection of their Lord. Those who follow you are those who do not wish to respond to their Lord’s call; it is only them you can lead along.”

O people! Your Lord grants you blessings on the seas, just as in the heavens and on the earth; by the laws He has set He makes ships sail on the seas, and you gain many other benefits besides. Your Lord is most merciful and most gracious.

When you meet some danger at sea, you at once cast aside and forget those you took as gods besides Allah and hoped for help from, and begin to pray and plead with Allah to save you from that danger; but when Allah saves you and brings you to land, you return to your former state and turn away from the system and morality of life by which one should live according to Allah; for most people are ungrateful.

Then do you have any guarantee that on land, too, Allah will not make the earth swallow you up, or send upon you a storm that devastates everything around, and destroy you for your ingratitude? If Allah makes such a judgment, no one can stand against it.

Or are you so sure that He will not send you back to sea, raise a storm against you, and drown you there? Could there be anyone able to prevent it?

We have bestowed many blessings on the children of Adam, and moreover made them more honored and superior by granting them qualities above the rest of Our creation. We have provided them with means and ease of travel on land and sea, and given them provision of good and pure things.

And when the day comes, We will gather all people before Us, together with the leaders they followed, to judge them according to the stance they took toward the system of life to which We invited them. Those who are given their record of deeds from the right will read it in joy, and they will not be wronged in the least.

Those who in their worldly lives turned away from Allah’s verses and ignored them, and were ungrateful for His blessings, will be raised in the Hereafter blind and bewildered and brought before Him.

O Prophet! These ungrateful people, who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth, are striving to get you to change the verses We reveal to you as they wish, to invent lies in Allah’s name and twist the truths; only if you fall into this trap of theirs will they take you as a friend.

O Prophet! Had We not warned you about this, strengthened your faith, and made your stand firm, you might perhaps have inclined toward them, if only a little. Had you fallen into such a trap and done wrong, We would have made you suffer a most severe punishment in this world and the Hereafter, and no one could have saved you from Us.

Realizing that they could not make you fall into their trap, those who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth now began to resort to every kind of persecution so as to drive you from your land and your home; but it is a fact that, after driving you out, they themselves will not remain there long. This is the law We applied to the prophets We sent before you too. You will find no change in Our law.

From when the sun passes its zenith until the fall of night, perform your prayer consciously, giving it its due, and never neglect the dawn prayer, for the dawn prayer is the prayer of the time when a person’s perception is keenest and spiritual feelings are most intense.

O Prophet! In addition, as something specific to you, break your sleep at some hour of the night and pray; in this way your Lord will raise you to a station where you will be praised.

Say: “My Lord, grant me to enter every undertaking honestly and in a way that pleases You, and to leave every place honestly and in a way that pleases You; give me strength and support from Your presence, and make me succeed in my struggle.”

And say also: “Now the truth has come with the Quran; no system can claim to be right in the face of it, nor hold its ground against it. Falsehood and what is counterfeit are doomed to perish anyway. For every system that is a human invention will, like human beings, decay and pass away.”

We have sent down this Quran as a source of healing and mercy for those who believe in Allah’s call and fulfill their responsibilities toward Him. And for the ungrateful and the wrongdoers who turn away from Allah’s call, the Quran only adds to their loss, harm, ruin, and destruction.

Most of the people on whom We bestow abundant blessings do not give thanks, but grow spoiled and unruly. They are ungrateful, turn away from Our call, and dodge it; and when some hardship or distress befalls them, they at once give way to despair.

O Prophet! Say: “Every person chooses whom he wishes to live for, by what standard, and how, and lives accordingly. Your Lord knows very well who chooses what is right and who chooses what is wrong.”

O Prophet! They also ask you how the spirit (the revelation) We make known to you is conveyed; say to them: “It is conveyed to me by my Lord’s command; I know only the one who conveys it to me and what is conveyed. On this matter I can tell you only this much.”

If We willed, We could make you forget what We have revealed to you and wipe it out, as We did with those whom We made forget what We had revealed, and who lost it from their lives, because they stubbornly rejected the divine call. No one could prevent it. That Allah does not make you forget what He has revealed is a great favor to you.

Even if all humans and jinn came together, put forth all their strength and means, and helped one another in this, they could still not produce the like of the Quran.

In this Quran We have set out again and again, with full clarity, in detail, and with examples, the one right system of life and its morality for people; yet that most people turn away from it is nothing but ingratitude and insolence.

These ungrateful deniers even go so far as to say to you, “For us to believe what you say, you must make springs gush forth from the ground for us; you must have a miraculous garden of palm trees and vines and make rivers flow through it; or, as you claim will happen before the Day of Resurrection, you must bring the sky down in pieces on our heads and bring Allah and the angels before us. What is more, you must have a mansion of gold, and you must ascend to heaven and bring us a book from there, and we must read it and see there too what you say.

Unless we see these things we have listed, we will never believe that you are a prophet, nor accept your call.” Say to them: “Only my Lord has the power to do the things you speak of; I am a human being whose power is limited like yours, charged with conveying His verses to you.”

Another pretext that keeps those who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth from following Allah’s verses when they are conveyed to them is their saying, “What? Has Allah sent a mortal human being like us as a prophet? That cannot be!”

O Prophet! Say to them: Allah has said: “Had the inhabitants of the earth been angels, We would surely have sent down to them from the sky an angel as a prophet.”

Say: “Allah is enough as a witness between me and you. He sees and knows everything and is aware of everything.”

Only those who believe in Allah’s call and make every effort to live the life their faith requires have found the right path. Those who after this stubbornly and persistently choose another path as their way of life, Allah leaves to themselves in the swamps they have chosen and does not help them. On the Day of Resurrection He gathers them blind, deaf, and dumb, and drags them on their faces into Hell; and whenever the fire of Hell begins to die down, it is kindled again and stoked into blazing flames.

This is the punishment they have deserved because they rejected what was made known through the Quran and mocked the Hereafter, saying, “So we are to be raised to life again after we die and mix with the soil, are we?”

Do these people never consider that Allah, who created the heavens, the earth, and all that is between them from nothing, can create them anew after they die? Have no doubt that when the day of your raising comes, you will surely be gathered in Allah’s presence. Their turning away from this truth is nothing but ingratitude and insolence.

Say: “O people! Had you owned the treasures of our Lord’s mercy, blessings, and provision, you would have held on to them tightly for fear they would run out if you gave, and given nothing to anyone, for the ignorant human being is very greedy and very miserly.”

We granted Moses, along with Our verses, nine miracles as proof of his prophethood; ask the Children of Israel about this. They will tell you what took place when Moses came to Pharaoh with these miracles and verses.

When Moses invited Pharaoh to live by the system of life that is Allah’s call, Pharaoh said to him: “O Moses! I think you are a sorcerer.”

Moses replied, “You know perfectly well that no one but Allah, the Lord of the heavens and the earth, has the power to show these miracles. O Pharaoh! I, for my part, see that you have deserved punishment for refusing to accept the call despite so many plain truths.”

Thereupon Pharaoh resolved to wipe out Moses and those with him, root and branch. And We saved those with Moses from his oppression and drowned Pharaoh and his men in the waters.

After this We made known to the Children of Israel: “Now settle in the land in safety, without fear of Pharaoh; and never forget that on the Day of Reckoning We will gather you all together and question you about your stance toward Our call.”

We have sent down this Quran to explain and proclaim to people the reason for their creation and to invite them to live in keeping with it. O Prophet! We have charged you with giving good news to those who follow the call and warning those who will not.

We have sent down the Quran section by section, spread over time, so that you may recite it and put it into practice slowly, pausing over it.

O Prophet! Say to those who will not believe in your prophethood and that the Quran is being sent down by your Lord: “Whether you believe or not, without doubt those who have some knowledge, however little, of earlier revelations and wish to live in keeping with Allah’s call fall down at once in prostration when the Quran is recited, and say: ‘The knowledge and power of our Lord are boundless. He is the One Exalted, and what we hear is the fulfillment of His promise, heralding that the last prophet has come.’” And so some of the People of the Book, striving to submit to the truths they have heard, listen to the Quran with tearful eyes, in reverence and humility.

Say: “Whether you pray calling Him Allah or calling Him the Most Gracious, whichever of Allah’s names you pray by, know that the most beautiful names belong to Allah. When you pray to Him and perform the prayer, neither raise your voice too much nor lower it too much, but take a way between the two.”

And say also: “Allah alone is worthy of thanks and praise. It is Allah alone who created everything in the universe, owns what He has created, established its order, and laid down its laws, who has no partner in His rule, who has taken no child, and who has no need of help.”