The Pen (Al-Qalam)
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful
۞ Noon. I swear by the pen and what the angels write, 1 You are not insane, by the munificence of your Lord. 2 And lo! thine verily will be a reward unfailing. 3 And verily thou art of a high and noble disposition. 4 So very soon, you will see and they too will realise – 5 Which of you is afflicted with madness. 6 Verily, your Lord knows better, who (among men) has gone astray from His Path, and He knows better those who are guided. 7 Then do not obey the deniers. 8 they would like thee to be soft [with them,] so that they might be soft [with thee]. 9 Do not yield to any contemptible swearer of oaths, 10 A slanderer, going about with calumnies, 11 Forbidder of good, outstepping the limits, sinful, 12 the coarse-grained, and above all mean and ignoble; 13 because he has wealth and sons. 14 When Our revelations are rehearsed unto him, he saith: fables of the ancients. 15 We shall mark him upon his nose! 16 We have tried them as we tried the owners of a certain orchard, who vowed to harvest all its fruits the next morning, 17 without adding to their swearing, (Allah willing, InshaAllah). 18 Then, a visitation from your Lord came down upon it while they slept, 19 So by the morning it seemed as though picked clean. 20 (Then) in the morning they called out to one another, saying: 21 Saying: Go early to your tilth if you would cut (the produce). 22 So they went off, whispering to one another, 23 “No destitute person shall enter it today.” 24 – and early they went, strongly bent upon their purpose. 25 When they saw the garden, they said, "Surely we have lost our way. 26 Nay, but we are desolate! 27 Said one of them, more just (than the rest): "Did I not say to you, 'Why not glorify (Allah)?'" 28 They said, "All glory belongs to God. We have certainly been unjust". 29 Some of them started to blame others. 30 They said, 'Woe, alas for us! Truly, we were insolent. 31 It may be that our Lord will give us in exchange a better than it; to our Lord we humbly turn.' 32 Such was the punishment. And verily the punishment of the Hereafter is greater if they did but know. 33