Surah Al-Muzzammil

Striving in Ibadah.

In the first seven verses the Prophet ﷺhas been commanded to the effect:

“Prepare yourself to shoulder the responsibilities of the great mission that has been entrusted to you; its practical form is that you should rise during the hours of night and stand up in Prayer for half the night, or for a little more or less of it.” In v. 8-14, he has been exhorted to the effect: “Devote yourself exclusively to that Allah Who is the Owner of the whole universe, entrust all your affairs to Him with full satisfaction of the heart. Bear with patience whatever your opponents may utter against you. Do not be intimate with them. Leave their affair to Allah: He Himself will deal with them.”

Then, in v. 15-19, those of the people of Makkah, who were opposing the Prophet ﷺhave been warned, so as to say: “We have sent a Messenger to you just as We sent a Messenger to the Pharaoh. Just consider what fate the Pharaoh met when he did not accept the invitation of the Messenger of Allah. Supposing that you are not punished by a torment in this world, how will you save yourselves from the punishment for disbelief on the Day of Resurrection.”

This is the subject matter of the first section. The second section, according to a hadith from Sa’id bin Jubair, was sent down ten years later and in it the initial command given in connection with the Tahajjud Prayer, in the beginning of the first section, was curtailed. The new command enjoined, “Offer as much of the Tahajjud Prayer as you easily can, but what the Muslims should particularly mind and attend to is the five times obligatory Prayer a day, they should establish it regularly and punctually; they should discharge their Zakah dues accurately; and they should spend their wealth with sincere intentions for the sake of Allah. In conclusion, the Muslims have been exhorted, saying: “Whatever good works you do in the world, will not go waste, but they are like the provision which a traveller sends up in advance to his permanent place of residence. Whatever good you send up from the world, you will find it with Allah, and the provision thus sent up is much better than what you will have to leave behind in the world, and with Allah you will also get a much better and richer reward than what you have actually sent up before.”