Surah Fussilat, Ayah 21

On the Day of Judgement, the Sinners' Limbs will testify against Them

وَيَوْمَ يُحْشَرُ أَعْدَآءُ اللَّهِ إِلَى النَّارِ فَهُمْ يُوزَعُونَ

(And (remember) the Day that the enemies of Allah will be gathered to the Fire, then they will be driven.) means, remind these idolators of the Day when they will be gathered to the Fire and they will be driven, i.e., the keepers of Hell will gather the first of them with the last of them, as Allah says elsewhere:

وَنَسُوقُ الْمُجْرِمِينَ إِلَى جَهَنَّمَ وِرْداً

(And We shall drive the criminals to Hell, in a thirsty state) (19:86). n

حَتَّى إِذَا مَا جَآءُوهَا

(Till, when they reach it,) means, when they stand at its edge,

شَهِدَ عَلَيْهِمْ سَمْعُهُمْ وَأَبْصَـرُهُمْ وَجُلُودُهُم بِمَا كَانُواْ يَعْمَلُونَ

فَهُمْ يُوزَعُونَ (So they will be kept under control…...41:19) The original word used in the text is ` Yuza’ un' which is derived from waz' which means ` to stop', ` to prevent'. Most of the learned exegetes have explained it in the sense that when people of Hell, who will be numerous, will be taken forward to the field of hashr and the place of reckoning, the people in the front will be halted for a while, so that the people in the rear also catch up with them. This will be done to avoid indiscipline. (It is this interpretation of the verse on the basis of which it is translated as ` kept under control' ) And some exegetes have translated ` Yuza’ un' as ` pushed' which means that they would be driven towards the place of reckoning by being pushed. (Qurtubi)

Man is living in a world where the vastness of heaven and earth negates the greatness of man; where the event of death proves that man is a non-entity and truly powerless. In spite of this, man poses as being great and harbours no doubts of his power. God, time and again, causes the Truth to be revealed and declared, thus disproving man’s claim to greatness. But man does not learn a lesson until he is destroyed. The ruins of the ‘Ad, Thamud and other communities are concrete examples of the results of human folly. The very days that these peoples considered auspicious became the very reverse at the behest of the Almighty. Here ‘inauspicious days’ means winter, for the Arabs called winter inauspicious.