The Pen (Al-Qalam)
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful
۞ Noon. I swear by the pen and what the angels write, 1 By the grace of your Lord, you are not a mad man. 2 Surely thou shalt have a wage unfailing; 3 surely thou art upon a mighty morality. 4 You shall see and they will see 5 Which of you is the demented. 6 Verily, your Lord knows better, who (among men) has gone astray from His Path, and He knows better those who are guided. 7 Do not, then, yield to those who reject the Truth, decrying it as false; 8 They wish that you should compromise (in religion out of courtesy) with them, so they (too) would compromise with you. 9 And do not yield to any contemptible swearer, 10 Defamer, going about with slander 11 Hinderer of the good, transgressor, sinful, 12 moreover ignoble, 13 Because he is a possessor of wealth and children, 14 that, whenever Our messages are conveyed to him, such a one says, "Fables of ancient times"? 15 We shall mark him upon his nose! 16 Verily We! We have proved them even as We proved the fellows of a garden when they sware that they would surely reap it in the morning. 17 And they did not say, “If Allah wills”. 18 Then a visitation from thy Lord visited it, while they were sleeping, 19 And by morning it lay as if it had already been harvested, a barren land. 20 In the morning they called out to one another, 21 "Go early to your farms, if you want to pluck the fruits". 22 So they went off, saying one unto another in low tones: 23 "Let no needy person come to you within it today." 24 And they went out betimes determined in purpose. 25 But when they saw it they said: 'We have surely gone astray. 26 No. In fact we have been deprived of it." 27 Said the most moderate of them, 'Did I not say to you, "Why do you not give glory?"' 28 They cried out: “Glory be to our Lord! Certainly we were sinners.” 29 Then they began to heap reproaches on each other. 30 They said, "O woe to us; indeed we were transgressors. 31 Maybe our Lord will give us a better orchard in its place; to our Lord do we penitently turn.” 32 Such is the Punishment (in this life); but greater is the Punishment in the Hereafter,- if only they knew! 33