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

By the Day of Resurrection, and by the soul that will be reproached in remorse by the human being who did not grasp the importance of that Day and did not believe that it would come.

Does the human being imagine that We will not bring his bones together, raise him to life, and call him to account for whether or not he lived in keeping with Our call? Yet We are able to create him anew, right down to the lines on his fingertips. Despite this truth, many still turn away from Allah’s call and mock, saying, “So when is this Day of Resurrection supposed to come!”

But when eyes are frozen in a fearful stare at the terror of that Day, and when the moon and the sun are brought together and plunged into darkness, those people begin struggling frantically, wondering where they can flee and take refuge that day.

On that day everyone will be gathered in the presence of his Lord to give an account of whose call he answered in living his worldly life, and to receive the recompense for it. All that they did will be laid plainly before them.

On that Day, even if those who turned away from Allah’s call and completed their worldly lives in that way try to defend themselves by inventing excuses, it will be of no use; even their own limbs will bear witness to their shirk (associating partners with Allah) and disbelief. On that day they will be told, “Do not hastily twist and turn your tongues this way and that and talk in circles in a vain attempt to clear yourselves. We have surely gathered together all that you did; now We will read it out item by item, and you, follow carefully what is read, and in this way We will have made everything clear.”

You loved the life of this world, which passes so quickly, and you paid no heed to, and disregarded, the fact that in the Hereafter you would be called to account for whom and what you followed in your lives.

As for those who strove in their worldly lives to believe in their Lord’s call, fulfill what it requires, and live by it and keep it alive, on the Day of Resurrection and Reckoning their faces will shine with happiness as they await the blessings Allah will graciously grant them.

But on that Day the faces of those who lived taking other lords and gods besides Allah will turn pitch-black with despair and fear, and they will realize that a punishment that will crack and break their backbones is about to befall them.

When the soul of the human being who lived his worldly life with his back turned on Allah’s call and in rebellion against Him reaches his throat, and those around him are in a frantic state, wondering whether there is anyone who can save him, then he too fully grasps that the time of parting has arrived; in his last struggle his legs become entangled, and only then does he believe and accept that this departure is a going into the presence of your Lord. But last-minute regret is of no use.

As long as he lived, he refused to follow the system of life that is the reason for his creation, to which Allah invited him through prophets and books. He was arrogant and boastful toward it, and, swaggering, he either set out to build a system of life of his own or turned to and clung to the systems built by people like himself.

Woe to such ungrateful people, who turn their backs on Allah’s call even though He created them and endowed them with so many blessings! The punishment draws a little closer to them every day.

Does the human being imagine that he will be left to his own devices and can live life as he pleases, that Allah will not intervene in life and will not call him to account for the way he used the blessings He gave?

Yet Allah created him from semen, which is a drop of fluid; then He turned it into a morsel of flesh, then formed his limbs and gave him shape; and, endowing him with the faculties to benefit from His blessings and to tell right from wrong, He brought him into being as male and female.

Allah, who first created the human being in this way, certainly has the power to create him again, give him life, and call him to account.