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

O Prophet, you who have wrapped yourself up in the cloak of solitude! Take action to carry out your duty; go among the people to inform and warn them!

Speak of your Lord’s greatness, of the blessings He has bestowed, and of the perfect working of the magnificent order He has established in the universe.

Do not let shirk (associating partners with Allah) and disbelief confuse your mind and pollute your feelings and thoughts! Cleanse your mind completely of these maladies. Let your clothing be clean and in harmony with the loftiness of your call, and go out among people with your virtuous and morally excellent character.

Do not forget that you are a caller who, in Allah’s name, invites people to live by the system of life that is the reason for their creation, and do not let the hardships you will face while carrying out your duty grow large in your eyes and make you lose heart!

Be patient with them for your Lord’s sake; expect nothing in return from anyone for the good you do, and do not regard it as too much and throw it in people’s faces!

Give counsel by conveying to people that the end of the world will come; that on the Day of Resurrection everyone will be raised to life and called to account for whom and what they followed in living their worldly lives; and that for those who have turned away from the call, that Day will be a very hard day.

Those who cover up the truth, ignore it, and call it a lie will have to pay a very heavy price on that Day.

It is for Me to settle accounts with those whom I created so that they would follow the system of life to which they are being invited, and whom I endowed with so many blessings, giving them wealth, property, and children, yet who are never satisfied, are ungrateful, and turn away from My call. For them there are, in Hell, heavy yokes, a searing punishment, and food that will not go down the throat.

As for those accursed people who stubbornly turn away from the call to the truth, who act arrogantly and with hostility toward the God-conscious (muttaqin), who give no credence to the verses of the Quran, calling them the words of a sorcerer, and who weigh things up by their own lights: I will drive them up a very steep and tormenting slope. In the Hereafter, too, I will cast them into a fierce fire of Hell, the intensity of which they cannot even begin to think about or imagine. That scorching fire neither kills a person nor leaves him alive; it inflicts a torment that never ends, and makes him pay the price for his ingratitude and rebellion against Allah while he was in the world.

In Hell there are nineteen angels who carry out to the full the duties assigned to them. We have made the number of these angels a means of testing the denial of those who reject Allah’s call and do not believe in the life of the Hereafter. We made it known so that the People of the Book, to whom this number had been made known before, would not fall into doubt that the Quran is a divine book, and so that the faith of the believers would increase.

The disbelievers and those who associate partners with Allah try to make an excuse for their misguidance with remarks that concern no one, such as: “What does Allah mean by this number? Is it few or many? Why this many and not some other number?” Allah lets whoever refuses to accept the truth and insists on going astray go astray, and He brings whoever wishes to live in keeping with the reason for his creation to what he wishes.

Only He knows the strength, the true nature, and the number of those whom your Lord has charged with duties. O people! Concern yourselves with living by the system of life for which Allah will hold you responsible! You are being warned through the examples given, so take heed!

By the moon, by the night as it departs, and by the morning as it brightens: We will cast those who turn away from Our call into a most intense, scorching fire in Hell. This punishment is a warning that it will certainly befall those who take other gods besides Allah, both those who have already died and those still left behind. Every human being will receive the recompense for the way of life he chose and lived.

Those who believed and fulfilled their responsibilities, while living amid the blessings of Paradise, will ask those writhing in the punishment of Hell, “What has driven you into this scorching fire?” And they will answer, “In our worldly life we used to plunge into falsehood along with those who plunged into it; we would not feed the poor, we would not follow Allah’s call, and we did not believe that we would face the Day of Reckoning. At last death came upon us, and we came face to face with this truth.”

No one can intercede for them any longer.

When this is the inevitable truth in the end, how is it that most people turn away from Allah’s call, turn their backs, and flee like wild donkeys fleeing from a lion?

Those who turn away from the call to the truth want a book sent to each of them that endorses the system, based on shirk and disbelief, that they have inherited from their forefathers. In truth, they do not fear the fire of Hell of which they are being warned, nor are they concerned about being called to account.

What is being made known to you is a reminder, a warning, and a counsel. Whoever wishes takes heed. It is Allah alone whose counsel must be listened to, whose call must be followed, and toward whom one must feel responsible.