Surah An-Najm: Thematic English Translation (Mustafa Çevik)

Just think about the words of the call that your companion Muhammad, one of your own, is making in Allah’s name. Do those words resemble in any way the words of someone not in his right mind, or of a poet? No, not in the least.

By the stars as they slip away: he is inviting you not to words he has made up himself, but, through Allah’s verses, to the truth that is the reason for your creation.

This revelation was conveyed to the Prophet by the angel (Gabriel) whom Allah endowed with superior qualities, strengthened, and charged with this duty.

As the angel came to convey the revelation, he first appeared in the distance; then he drew as near to him as the two ends of a bow, or even nearer, and conveyed the revelation.

The Prophet believed with his mind and his heart that what he had seen and experienced was real and not imagined. Do you doubt the truth of what your companion says about this, a man who has lived among you for years and who, for his honesty and character, is known as al-Amin (the Trustworthy)?

The Prophet had seen that angel (Gabriel) once more, at a time when he was near Sidrat al-Muntaha, far from the city. Then, too, the messenger angel had covered the Sidra and had appeared to the Prophet plainly, in his true form and identity, as a great miracle of Allah. This event was not a dream or a figment of the imagination; it was the very truth.

While Allah, through His Prophet, is calling you to live by a system of life that will bring you out of darkness into light and, in the Hereafter, admit you to His Paradise, what is the matter with you that you expect intercession from the false gods you have invented alongside Allah, naming them al-Lat, Manat, and al-Uzza and saying, “These are the angels, the daughters of Allah”?

That you ascribe daughters to Allah and sons to yourselves, and that you conceive of Allah as having children and accept this, is clear proof that you have not grasped Him as you should, nor sufficiently. Your forefathers’ persistence in living in shirk (associating partners with Allah), and the fabricated gods they produced to keep standing the systems they had invented, are nothing but symbols of shirk and disbelief. Yet now the true system of life has come to people from their Lord.

Did you imagine that Allah, who created everything in the universe and is its Owner, would leave the governance of what He has created to human whim and wishes? The truth is that the authority to establish the order of this world and the Hereafter belongs to Allah alone.

Although Allah has not permitted the angels in the heavens to be intercessors for people in this world or the Hereafter, some of you have gone so far as to expect intercession from the angels, whom you regard as the daughters of Allah.

Such people are obstinate, ignorant people who do not know Allah well enough, have no real knowledge, and follow conjecture. The truth is that conjecture can never be like the truth, nor can it take its place.

O Prophet! Turn away from those who, although they are invited to live in keeping with the reason for their creation, turn their backs, and from those who do not believe in the life of the Hereafter; pay no attention to their reactions and attacks.

Instead of understanding that Allah created them to direct them toward a purpose, and following it, such people are intent on living as they please. Allah surely knows what and whom each person follows in his life, and wishes to follow.

Your Lord, the Owner of all that is in the heavens and on earth, will call you to account for the way you used the blessings He entrusted to you for a short time, to manage on His behalf. He will not leave unpunished the betrayal of those who, not considering that Allah is the true Owner of what was entrusted to them, used it as if it were their own property. But those who used it in keeping with the purpose and manner Allah made known, He will reward.

The greatest of sins is to turn away from Allah’s call and associate partners with Him, and to encourage others to do the same. Allah is merciful, compassionate, and forgiving toward those who repent of their sins and fulfill their responsibilities.

When He was creating you from earth, and while you were in your mothers’ wombs, it was Allah who knew best your weaknesses and what you are inclined to do and not to do; it is He who created you with these characteristics. Do not regard yourselves as flawless or present yourselves as such; guard yourselves against sins, and do not put out of your minds that you have responsibilities toward Allah.

The ungrateful, who turn away from the reason for their creation despite the many blessings We have bestowed on them, not only value nothing but the brief life of this world, but also make no effort at all to purify themselves of shirk and disbelief. They do not spend from their wealth in the way that would please Allah. Do such people imagine that they will not pay the price for this in the Hereafter and can escape the punishment? The truth is that they have no knowledge and no proof on this matter.

Yet in the pages (revelations) We sent to Moses and Abraham, too, We had invited people to live the Allah-centered life that is the reason for their creation, and had warned those who turn away from it of what would befall them in the Hereafter. No one bears the burden of another’s sins. When the time comes, every human being will receive in full the recompense for the stance he took toward Allah’s call and for the effort he made.

It is Allah before whom everyone will at last stand to give account, and who, at the end of the reckoning, will cause them to weep or to laugh. Surely it is He, too, who creates human beings, male and female, from a drop of sperm, endows them with blessings, and then will cause them to die and will raise them to life. And again it is He who gives to whom He wills as much as He wills, and makes known how it is to be used.

He is also the Lord of the star Sirius (ash-Shi‘ra). (Your Lord, who established the order of the universe He created and laid down its laws, is also offering you a perfect system of life through the Quran, which He is sending down to you part by part.)

Allah also brought punishment upon and destroyed the peoples of Ad, Thamud, Noah, and Lot, who, although He had created them and endowed them with countless blessings, were ungrateful, transgressed, and rebelled against His call, just as He did with those before them.

O human being! When this is the truth, and when you have been endowed with so many blessings, will you still go on being ungrateful to your Lord?

This revelation now being made known to you is a warning, like those made known to the earlier prophets.

While every human being is drawing nearer to his own end, the Resurrection and the Day of Reckoning, whose exact time Allah alone knows, are also drawing near.

Before you meet the end of which you are being warned, instead of grasping the importance of the call made to you and grieving over what will befall you, you pay it no heed and go on laughing and amusing yourselves. At least from now on, use your reason and, falling prostrate, turn to Allah’s call.