Their Reckoning Has Drawn Near

The most important themes this sūrah contains are the following, which we must go through.

The first is that it opens with iqtaraba li-l-nāsi ḥisābuhum wa hum fī ghaflatin muʿriḍūn: the reckoning of the people has drawn near. The time of the reckoning has come very close, and they are ignoring all of it. They are in their heedlessness, they are negligent, they are taken up with so many other things.

And Allah says mā yaʾtīhim min dhikrin min rabbihim muḥdathin illā istamaʿūhu wa hum yalʿabūn: any new dhikr and reminder that comes to them from Allah (swt), they may listen to it, but they are only playing. Their hearts are wholly distracted. May Allah not make us of these.

Then it goes on to the disbelievers. Qiyāmah and ḥisāb plainly refer to the qiyāmah. There are several stages of the Hereafter. There is the qiyāmah, the ending of this world. Then there is the time when nothing is left. Then there will be the baʿth, which is the resurrection. Then the nashr, and that will be the driving forth. Then there will be the ḥashr, which means that everyone will be gathered upon the plain of the maḥshar. Then the yawm al-ḥisāb, and then it becomes the ḥisāb. These are the various stages of that journey of the Hereafter, which we ask Allah to make easy for us and to facilitate and to make successful for us.

These people are not preparing for the Hereafter. They are not preparing deeds — they are doing deeds, but not deeds that will benefit them in the Hereafter. Indeed, what they do rather is that when a new verse is revealed they play with it, they mock it, they make jokes of it, and of course they deny it. They do not understand what kind of awesome and honourable speech this is, which holds so much of their success; they simply do not understand it.