Surah Ash-Shams

Its theme is to distinguish the good from the evil and to warn the people who were refusing to understand this distinction of an evil ending that awaited them. In view of the subject matter this Surah consists of two parts. The first part consists of v. 1-10, and the second of v. 11-15. The first part deals with three things:

1. That just as the sun and the moon, the day and the night, the earth and the sky, are different from each other and contradictory in their effects and results, so are the good and the evil different from each other and contradictory in their effects and results; they are neither alike in their outward appearance nor can they be alike in their results.
2. That Allah after giving the human self-powers of the body, sense and mind has not left it uninformed in the world, but has instilled into his unconscious by means of a natural inspiration the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, and the sense of the good to be good and of the evil to be evil.
3. That the future of man depends on how by using the powers of discrimination, will and judgment that Allah has endowed him with, he develops the good and suppresses the evil tendencies of the self. If he develops the good inclination and frees his self of the evil inclinations, he will attain to eternal success and if, on the contrary, he suppresses the good and promotes the evil, he will meet with disappointment and failure.

In the second part, citing the historical precedent of the people of Thamud, the significance of Messengership has been brought out. A Messenger is raised in the world because the inspirational knowledge of good and evil that Allah has placed in human nature is, by itself, not enough for the guidance of man. On account of man’s failure to fully comprehend he proposes false ideas and theories of good and evil and thus goes astray. That is why Allah sent down clear Revelation to the Prophets so that they would make clear to the people as to what is good and what is evil. Likewise, the Prophet Salih was sent to the people of Thamud, but the people overwhelmed by the evil of their self, had become so rebellious that they rejected him. And when he presented before them the miracle of the she camel, as demanded by themselves, the most wretched one of them, in spite of his warning, hamstrung it, in accordance with the will and desire of the people. Consequently, the entire tribe was overtaken by a disaster.

While narrating this story of the Thamud nowhere in the Surah has it been said - O people of Quraysh, if you rejected your Prophet, Muhammad ﷺ, as the Thamud had rejected theirs, you too would meet with the same fate as they met. The conditions at that time in Makkah were similar to those of the people of Thamud against the Prophet Salih. Therefore, the narration of this story was by itself enough to suggest to the people of Makkah that this historical precedent applied to them too.