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

Woe to those who cheat in measuring and weighing!... When they take something from people, they demand full measure and weight; but when they measure or weigh for others, they cheat and give short measure and short weight.

Though they have been told that when they are raised again they will be called to account for what they have done, they do not believe it wholeheartedly, and imagine they will get away with what they do. The truth is not at all as they imagine; the records of what they do are kept in Sijjin. You could not, of course, have known what Sijjin is, since We had not told you until now.

It is the name of the indelible, imperishable books in which everything done by those who pay no heed to the warnings given through Allah’s verses, do not believe them, and do not act accordingly is recorded in full. Woe on that day to those before whom the books in which their records were kept are set down, when the Day of Reckoning they did not believe in comes!

Those who do not wish to know Allah as He deserves do not believe that the Day of Reckoning will come to pass. Whenever Allah’s verses are conveyed to them and they are invited to what is right, they say, “These are all tales of the ancients.”

Because they stubbornly persist in refusing to accept the truths, their consciences have been dulled, and their hearts have hardened, darkened, and rusted over. Surely such people will be deprived of their Lord’s compassion and mercy, and will enter the Fire to be punished with the punishment for what they did, and they will be told, “This is the Hell you did not believe in, though you were warned in the world.”

And the records of all the deeds of the believers, who believe in the divine system of life to which they are invited and live in keeping with it, are kept in “Illiyyun”. It is We who make known to you that the books in which these records are kept are Illiyyun.

The records of these books of deeds are kept and guarded by the angels. We make this known to you so that in the end you will not say, ‘We knew nothing of these records.’ On the Day of Reckoning the believers will see the records in the books set before them and rejoice, and will be rewarded with the blessings of Paradise. Sitting in the mansions Allah has bestowed on them, they will gaze at the blessings granted them, and their happiness will be read in their faces. There they will be offered pure, most delicious drinks in sealed vessels, of which the more one drinks the more one wants, leaving the scent of musk in the mouth.

Let those who strive strive to attain such rewards, and vie with one another to reach these blessings. These drinks, at the height of delight, are made of the most precious blends, and are filled from springs from which only those who deserve to be very near to Allah will drink.

In their worldly lives, those who associated partners with Allah used to mock the believers who believed in Allah’s call and fulfilled what their faith required whenever they passed by them, winking and making signs to one another; and among themselves they would gleefully recount the insults and oppression they had inflicted on the believers.

Yet they had not been appointed as watchers over others’ beliefs, as their judges, or as those who decide their case; nor had they been created for that.

On the Day of Reckoning the believers will look at the state of those who treated them so and mocked them, and laugh; and seated on their thrones in Paradise they will say to one another, “Those who associated partners with Allah and denied the truth are suffering the penalty for being ungrateful to Allah.”