Surah Adh-Dhariyat

The Surah mostly deals with the Hereafter, and in the end, presents the invitation to Monotheism (Tawhid). In addition, the people have also been warned that refusal to accept the message of the Prophets and persistence in the concepts and creeds of ignorance have proved to be disastrous for those nations themselves which have adopted this attitude and way of life in the past.

About the Hereafter, this Surah presents: The people’s different and conflicting beliefs about the end of human life are themselves an express proof that none of these beliefs and creeds is based on knowledge. Everyone by himself has formed an ideology on the basis of conjecture. Someone thought that there would be no life-after-death; someone believed in the life-after-death, but in the form of the transmigration of souls; someone believed in the life hereafter and the meting out of the rewards and punishments but invented different sorts of props and supports to escape retribution. About a question of such vital and fundamental importance a wrong view of which renders man’s whole life-work wrong and waste and ruins his future for ever, it would be a disastrous folly to build an ideology only on the basis of speculation and conjecture, without knowledge. It would mean that man should remain involved in a grave misunderstanding, pass his whole life in the heedlessness of error, and after death should suddenly meet with a situation for which he had made no preparation at all.

There is only one way of forming the right opinion about such a question, and it is this: Man should seriously ponder over the knowledge about the Hereafter that the Prophet of Allah is conveying to him from Him, and should study carefully the system of the earth and heavens and his own existence. One should see whether the evidence of that knowledge’s being sound and correct is afforded by everything around him or not. In this regard, the arrangement of the wind and rain, the structure of the earth and the creatures found on it, man’s own self, the creation of the heavens and of everything in the world in the form of pairs have been presented as evidence of the Hereafter, and instances have been cited from human history to show that the temper of the empire of the Universe requires that the law of retribution must operate here.

In this very connection, it has also been stated that whenever the Prophets of Allah have been opposed and resisted, they have not been opposed and resisted on the basis of any rational ground but on the basis of the same obduracy and stubbornness and false pride that is being shown against the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, and there is no other motive for it than rebellion and arrogance. Then the Prophet ﷺhas been instructed not to bother about the rebels but to go on performing his mission of invitation and admonition, for it is useful and beneficial for the Believers although it may not be so for the other people. As for the wicked people who still persist in their rebellion, they should know that their predecessors who followed the same way of life, have already received their shares of the punishment, and these people’s share of the punishment has been made ready for them.

Connection between the beginning and the ending of the Surah What has been promised.

“Indeed, what you are promised is true.” (51:5) “And woe to those who have disbelieved from their Day which they are promised.” (51:60)