Surah Fussilat: Thematic English Translation (Mustafa Çevik)

Ha. Mim. Allah, who created the human being with the abilities to speak, read, and write, has sent him the Quran, made clear in words formed from the letters of his own language, so that he can tell right from wrong. This is a divine Book that makes known to the human being the reason for his creation, invites him to it, warns him to heed the call, and gives good news to those who believe in the warning and fulfill their responsibilities. But most people, without reflecting enough on the verses of the Quran, turn away from it and oppose its call.

Such people also say: “O Muhammad! The way of life to which you call us with the Quran appeals neither to our minds nor to our hearts, and we do not want to hear anything you say. Because you reject our system of life, barriers that can never be crossed have arisen between you and us. And we will do all we can to stop your call.”

O Prophet! Say to them: “I am a mortal human being like you, and until today I have lived among you. But now it is revealed to me that there is no true god but Allah. Come, let us all together take Allah alone as God, turn to living the system of life that is His call, and ask His forgiveness; otherwise woe to those who take other gods alongside Allah and turn away from His call.”

Such people cannot bring themselves to pay the material and spiritual price that living the truth demands, and so be purified. For they do not believe in the Hereafter.

But those who believe in Allah’s call and strive with their wealth and their lives to live as their faith requires will attain never-ending rewards in Paradise.

O Prophet, say to those who associate partners with Allah: “Allah, who created the earth in two days and in two days endowed it with so many blessings, established its order, bound it to laws, and sustains it, invites you too to live a life that is for your own good. When Allah is the one true Lord of all the worlds, would anyone who uses his reason and reflects take other gods alongside Allah and associate partners with Him?”

Allah set firm mountains upon the earth and established its balance, and distributed among living beings the blessings He created and spread there. Allah your Lord completed all this in four days. Then He shaped the sky, which was still smoke, created the seven heavens in two days, established their order, and bound them to laws.

We adorned the sky nearest the earth with stars like lamps, and set up a system there so that no harm would come to people from it, and so protected them. All this is the work of Allah, whose knowledge and power are boundless. O Prophet! If, despite these truths, those who associate partners with Allah turn away from His call, say to them: “I warn you of a punishment like the one that came upon the peoples of Ad and Thamud and destroyed them.”

Long ago their prophets had said to them, “Live a life whose limits Allah has set, and so serve none but Allah.” But they too had said, “Had our Lord wanted such a thing from us, He would have made it known to us not through you but by sending prophets from among the angels. So we do not believe you, and we reject your call.”

The people of Ad arrogantly opposed this call and threw down a challenge, saying, “There is no one mightier than us; no one can do anything to us,” and refused to grasp the power of Allah.

So We sent a freezing gale upon them, punished them with a humiliating punishment in their worldly life, and destroyed them on that grim day. Their punishment in the Hereafter will be far more severe still, and they will find no one to help them.

The people of Thamud too rejected their prophet’s call to the right path and went on living by their false systems. So We saved the prophet and those who believed with him, and destroyed the rest with a thunderbolt of punishment that We sent upon them.

On the Day of Resurrection all the enemies of Allah, who opposed His call and rebelled against Him, will be gathered together and driven to the Fire. When they are brought before Hell, their ears, their eyes, and their skins will bear witness against them concerning what they did.

They will ask their skins, “Why do you bear witness against us?” And their skins will say to them: “Allah, who makes everything speak, has today given us too the ability to speak and made us speak. It is He who brought you into being from nothing and created you. He has power over everything, and now you have been returned to Him to give account. Yet in your worldly life you were warned that in the Hereafter your ears, your eyes, and your skins would bear witness to what you did; but you did not believe, and did not give up associating partners with Allah. What is more, you used to say, ‘How will Allah know all that we do?’”

“Your wrong thoughts about your Lord have brought you to this evil state, and you have ended up among the losers.”

Thus those who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth will be condemned to the unbearable fire of Hell they have deserved. On the Day of Reckoning they will plead and implore to be sent back to the world to live in keeping with Allah’s call, but they will be given no such leave.

Because they were ungrateful to Allah and rebelled against Him, Satan and people who had become devils fastened upon them and made their wrongs seem right and fine to them. So, like those who associated partners with Allah and denied the truth, known and unknown, who came and went before them, they deserved the punishment. Surely they will all suffer ruin and bitterly regret what they did.

Those hostile to the system of life that is Allah’s call say to one another: “Do not listen to this Quran; make a noise when it is recited and stop people listening to it! Keep people busy with other things, keep them away from it, and do all you can to stop it being heard and understood.”

We will subject such people to a severe punishment, and judge and punish them by the worst of what they did.

Their penalty will be the fire of Hell, in which they will remain forever, and there, writhing in agony, they will say: “Our Lord! Show us those we followed in our worldly life, who kept us from taking You alone as God, caused us to turn away from Your call, and, visibly or unseen, whispered to us and confused our minds, so that we may trample them underfoot and they may become the lowest and most wretched of us all.”

As for those who say, ‘Our Lord is Allah,’ take Him alone as God, and strive to obey Him and fulfill their responsibilities, on the Day of Resurrection the angels will say to them: “Do not fear and do not grieve; enter the Gardens Allah has promised you and be happy. We are your friends in the life of the Hereafter, as we were in your worldly life. In Paradise you will have everything your souls desire; everything you wish for will be yours and at your command. All this is the hospitality of Allah, the Merciful and Forgiving, to you who responded to Allah’s call and did your utmost in this cause.”

Who could be finer in speech than one who calls people to the godhood of Allah alone, does righteous deeds, and says, “I am one of those who submit to Allah (the Muslims)”?

Good and evil are surely not the same; repay evil with good. When you do so, you will see that the one who was your enemy becomes a very close friend. Only those who bear hardships patiently, never lose their trust in Allah, and possess high morals and virtue can attain this mature quality.

If Satan and those who follow Satan try to drive you to anger, whisper to you, and provoke you, at once seek refuge in Allah. He hears everything and knows everything, and Allah protects those who seek refuge in Him from every kind of evil.

The night and the day, the sun and the moon, are also among the proofs of Allah’s knowledge and power. Never set about prostrating yourselves before the sun, the moon, or anything created like them, and worshipping them. Know Allah as He deserves, and prostrate yourselves before Him alone and worship Him alone.

Let those who arrogantly give themselves airs of greatness and turn away from worshipping Allah know well that those who truly know Allah worship Him night and day, without ever tiring, striving to win His good pleasure.

One of the proofs of Allah’s boundless knowledge and power is this bone-dry earth: when We send rain down upon it, at once it stirs, swells, comes to life and awakens. Have no doubt that Allah, who thus gives it life and revives it, will also raise the dead, for His power suffices for everything.

When the truths that all the proofs set forth show plainly the greatness of Allah’s knowledge and power, whose state is better: one who turns away from His call, deserves Hell, and is cast into the Fire, or one who turns to Allah’s call and fulfills what it requires?

Now let every person make his choice accordingly and live as he wishes. Allah knows what everyone does.

We know those who call the messages conveyed through the Quran lies and stubbornly reject its call. Yet this Quran is a divine Book that calls people to the right path and, through the rulings it makes known, prevents corruption, and it has been sent down by Allah, the Lord of all the worlds. Falsehood can find no place in it, neither from before it nor from behind it. No error or deficiency can be found in it.

O Prophet! What is said to you by those who associate partners with Allah is no different from what was said to the messengers before you. So you too hold out with patience, as those before you did. Your Lord forgives those who repent and turn to His call; but those who turn away from His call, rebel against Him, and take gods other than Him, He punishes with the most severe punishment.

Had We sent down the Quran in a language other than Arabic, those who associate partners with Allah would have said, “Should the verses of this Book not have come to us and been explained in Arabic (clear and plain)? We, whom the Prophet and the Book address, are Arabs, and we know no language but Arabic!” O Prophet! Say: “This Book is a guide for those who believe in the system of life that is the reason for their creation and wish to live it and keep it alive, and a healing for the troubles in hearts and for social ills.”

Those who turn away from Allah’s call, stubborn and ungrateful, have a heaviness and deafness in their ears. And so the Quran seems closed and incomprehensible to them. They feel as though they were being called from very far away in words they cannot make out.

In the past We gave Moses a Book too, but those who associated partners with Allah made baseless accusations about that Book, devoid of knowledge and proof, just as they do about the Quran. Had it not been for a word and a law of your Lord set beforehand, their penalty too would not have been deferred; they would have been punished at once. Because they do not know the truth of the matter, they keep talking recklessly about the Quran.

Know well that whoever believes in the call being made through the Quran and chooses to live by it does so for his own good.

And whoever turns his back on this call and rejects it does so to his own harm. Allah never wrongs His servants.

Allah alone knows when the Last Hour will come and the world will meet its end. Without His knowledge and decree no fruit stone can split its shell, and no female can conceive and give birth.

On the Day of Reckoning Allah will ask those who associate partners with Him: “Where now are those gods of yours whom you counted as sharing in My rights over you?” And they will say: “Now we confess that none of them shared in Your godhood.” So they will understand that those they took as gods alongside Allah in their worldly lives were of no use to them at all; but understanding this in the Hereafter will not save them from the punishment they deserve. On That Day there will be no escaping the punishment.

As if he were never going to die, never to be raised again and called to account for the way he used the blessings given him in worldly life, the human being never tires of chasing after wealth and property; and when hardship befalls him, he at once falls into despair.

When We rescue him from the hardship that befell him and bring him plenty and ease, he at once forgets Us and goes on insolently being ungrateful, saying, “This was my due anyway, and I got myself out of my troubles by my own efforts. Besides, I do not believe the Last Hour will come, or that there is any such thing as a Day of Reckoning. And even if such a day does come, on That Day too my Lord will reward me in the finest way.” Yet on the Day of Reckoning We will call these people, who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth, to account for what they said and did, and strike them with the severe punishment they deserve.

Those who stubbornly persist in living in denial and rebellion, though they enjoy so many blessings Allah has bestowed, are ungrateful to Allah, and instead of responding to His call they turn to false systems and make themselves servants of other servants. Yet whenever they fall into hardship, they at once begin to plead and implore Allah, praying for help.

Say to them: “Do you never consider that, though this Quran has been sent by Allah, you have strayed from the right path by calling it a lie and trying to cover up the truth?”

We are making plain the proofs of Our knowledge and power (on the horizons and within themselves): in the universe, and in the organs We have created in people’s own bodies and the harmonious way they work together. While Allah, through the Quran, invites you to live a life in harmony with your innate nature, will you still doubt Him? When the time comes you will grasp this truth to which Allah bears witness, but you will be far too late.

The truth is that those who associate partners with Allah are in doubt about being raised and brought into the presence of their Lord on the Day of Reckoning. Yet Allah’s knowledge and power are infinite, and He has power over everything.