Exegesis of the saying of Allah the Exalted: [So I swear by the twilight] to His saying: [And when the Qur'an is recited to them, they do not prostrate].

The Shaykh : In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful:
Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and may Allah send prayers and blessings upon our Prophet Muhammad, and upon his family and his Companions, and upon those who follow them with excellence until the Day of Judgment.
As for what follows: This is the final session in the month of Safar, 1414 AH, on a Thursday, and with it we conclude what remains of Surat al-Inshiqaq.
We have reached the saying of Allah the Exalted: : This sentence consists of an oath, the thing by which the oath is made, and the thing about which the oath is made, and the one who swears:
The oath is in His saying: : One might think that the meaning of "I do not swear" is negation, but that is not the case; rather, it is affirmation. The "la" here is used for emphasis. If it were omitted outside of the Qur'an, the speech would still be correct. It has parallels, such as His saying: , , , : The scholars say that in all of these, the "la" is for emphasis and that the oath is affirmative.
As for the one who swears, it is Allah (Mighty and Majestic). He is both the one who swears and the one by whom the oath is made. So, He (Glorified and Exalted is He) is the one who swears.
As for the thing by which the oath is made in the verse, it is the twilight and what is conjoined to it.
If someone were to ask: Why does Allah swear by His own news, when He (Glorified and Exalted is He) is truthful without an oath? And likewise, why does the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) swear by his own news, when he is truthful without an oath?
We say: The oath affirms the speech. The Arabic Qur'an was revealed in the Arabic tongue, and since it was their custom to affirm speech with an oath, this style became common in the Arabic tongue in which the Qur'an was revealed.
And His saying: : The twilight is: "the redness that appears after the setting of the sun". When this redness disappears, the time of Maghrib ends and the time of 'Isha' begins. This is the opinion of the majority of scholars.
Some said: When the whiteness disappears, which disappears about half an hour after the redness. But the position of the majority, to which Abu Hanifah (may Allah have mercy on him) is said to have returned, is that the twilight is the redness.
When this twilight disappears, the time of 'Isha' begins and the time of Maghrib ends.
He (the Exalted) said: This is also a thing by which the oath is made, conjoined to the twilight, meaning: And I swear by the night and what it gathers. These are two oaths: the night and what it gathers.
is well known. So what is the meaning of ?
It means: what it gathers. Because the night gathers the beasts, insects, and the like; they gather and come out, emerging from their burrows and homes. It may also refer to the gathering of people with one another.
The moon is well known. The meaning of "when it becomes full" is: when its light gathers and becomes complete and full. This occurs in the nights of the waxing moon. So Allah (Mighty and Majestic) swore by the night and what it gathers, meaning what it collects, and by the moon because it is a sign of the night. Then He said after that: . The address here is to all people, meaning: You will surely pass from one state to another. This means that states change, encompassing the states of time, the states of place, the states of the bodies, and the states of the hearts—pay attention—it includes four things: What did we say about them?
A state after a state. What are they?
We said: The states of time, the states of place, the states of the bodies, and the states of the hearts.
We know that the states of time shift. . One day there is joy, expansion, and ease of the soul, and another day it is the opposite, until a person feels this without there being a known cause. In this regard, the poet says:
"A day is against us and a day is for us *** A day we are humiliated and a day we are honored".
This is something each of us knows by himself. You wake up today feeling comfortable, happy, and joyful, and the next day it is the opposite without a cause. But this is how it must be; a person rides through these states. Likewise, in places, a person descends to a lodging today, and the next day to another, and a third, and a fourth, until the lodgings end in the Hereafter. And before the Hereafter are the graves, which are temporary lodgings. The graves are not the final lodgings, but rather a stage. An Arab man heard a man reciting the saying of Allah the Exalted: , and the Arab said: "By Allah, the visitor is not a resident". Meaning, the Arab, by his innate disposition, knew that there is something beyond these graves to which one will ultimately go, because as we know, a visitor visits and then moves on.
And by this we know that what we hear in the newspapers: "So-and-so passed away and was then moved to his final resting place", is a great error, and its implication is disbelief in Allah (Mighty and Majestic), disbelief in the Day of Resurrection. Because if you make the grave the final resting place, this means there is nothing after it, and this is disbelief in the Resurrection. The one who believes that the grave is the final resting place means there is nothing after it; this is disbelief. The one who believes that the grave is the final resting place and there is no resting place after it is a disbeliever. The final resting place is either Paradise or the Fire.
Now, we have mentioned two states: the first is time, and the second is place.
The third is the bodies. A person rides through the bodies from one state to another. Listen to the saying of Allah the Exalted: .
When a human being is first created, he is a small child whom you can gather his hands and feet with one of your hands and carry him with that hand. He is weak. Then he continues to grow stronger little by little until he becomes a strong, robust young man. Then, when he has reached full strength, he returns to weakness.
Some scholars have compared the state of the body to the state of the moon. It appears as a weak crescent, then grows little by little until it is full of light, then it begins to wane little by little until it disappears. We ask Allah to make our ending and yours good.
Yes, this is the state of the bodies.
The fourth is the states of the hearts. And what do you know about the states of the hearts? The states of the hearts are the calamity, they are the affliction, they are the blessing, they are the punishment.
The hearts, all the hearts of the children of Adam, are between two fingers of the fingers of the Most Merciful. He turns them as He wills. If He wills, He misguides them, and if He wills, He guides them. Every heart. And when the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) narrated this hadith, he said: ,
The hearts have strange states. Sometimes the heart attaches itself to the worldly life, and sometimes it attaches itself to something of the worldly life. Sometimes it attaches itself to wealth, and wealth becomes its greatest concern. Sometimes it attaches itself to women, and women become its greatest concern. Sometimes it attaches itself to palaces and houses, and that becomes its greatest concern. Sometimes it attaches itself to vehicles and cars, and that becomes its greatest concern. Sometimes it is with Allah (Mighty and Majestic), always with Allah, attaching itself to Allah (Glorified and Exalted is He), and seeing that the entire worldly life is a means to the worship of Allah and to the obedience of Allah. It uses the worldly life because it was created for him, and the worldly life does not use him.
Look, my brothers, at the people of the worldly life. Do you think that the worldly life serves them, or do they serve it?
Yes, they are the ones who serve it. They are the ones who exhausted themselves in acquiring it. But the people of the Hereafter are the ones who used the worldly life, and the worldly life served them. Therefore, they do not take from it except through the pleasure of Allah, and they do not spend it except in the pleasure of Allah (Mighty and Majestic). So they used it in taking and spending.
But the people of the worldly life who toiled with it, staying up at night reviewing the ledgers, reviewing the checks, reviewing the expenditures, reviewing the payments, reviewing what they took and what they spent—these people, in reality, were used by the worldly life and did not use it.
But the man who is at peace, for whom Allah made his provision sufficient, so that he is independent of people and not made wretched by it from the obedience of Allah—this is the one whom the worldly life served. These are the states of the hearts. The states of the hearts are the greatest of the four states.
Therefore, it is obligatory for us all, and I say this to myself before you: that we review our hearts every hour, every moment. Where have you turned, O heart? Where have you gone? Why do you turn away from Allah? Why do you look to the right and to the left?
But we seek refuge in Allah from the accursed Shaytan. Shaytan flows through the son of Adam like blood. It has overcome many people, to the extent that it diverts a person from his prayer, which is the head of his wealth after the two testimonies. You find that when he enters his prayer, his heart goes to the right and to the left until he exits his prayer without understanding anything of it. And the people shout, saying: Our prayer does not restrain us from indecency and evil. Where is the promise of Allah?
It is said: O my brother, is your prayer a prayer? If from the moment you say the opening takbir, the doors of worries are opened for you without end, are you praying? You prayed with your body, but you did not pray with your heart. And it came in the hadith from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): according to what you understand of it.
So the hearts ride from one state to another.
Then He (the Exalted) said: :
: What prevents them from believing, : What prevents them from believing, and what would harm them if they believed? !
The believer from the people of Pharaoh said: : So what is upon a person if he believes? !
And for this reason, He rebuked them, saying: meaning: they do not submit to Allah (Mighty and Majestic). So prostration here means submission to Allah, even if one does not prostrate on the ground, but one’s heart prostrates to Allah in humility and submission when hearing His verses. And try yourself, my brother, when the Qur'an is recited to you, does your heart prostrate, soften, and humble itself? If that is the case, then you are among the believers, and if your heart is not like that, then there is a resemblance in you to the polytheists who, when the Qur'an is recited to them, do not prostrate.
And among the signs of submission to Allah (Mighty and Majestic) when reading the Qur'an is that when a person reads a prostration verse, he prostrates to Allah in humility and submission to Him.
And some scholars have cited this verse as evidence for the obligation of prostration, meaning: prostration of recitation. And he said: If a person passes by a prostration verse and does not prostrate, he is sinful. And the correct view is that it is not obligatory, even though this view, meaning the view of obligation, is the school of Abu Hanifah and the choice of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him). But this is a weaker position, and that is because it is established in the authentic hadith that the Commander of the Faithful, 'Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him): , and that was in the presence of the Companions, and no one objected to him, and his Sunnah (may Allah be pleased with him) is among the Sunnahs that we are commanded to follow.
And on this basis, the stronger view is that prostration of recitation is not obligatory, but it is a confirmed recommended practice. So if you pass by a prostration verse, prostrate at whatever time you are, in the morning, in the evening, at night, or during the day. Say takbir when prostrating, and when you rise, do not say takbir and do not say salam, this is if you prostrate outside of prayer.
As for if you prostrate in prayer, you must say takbir when you prostrate and you must say takbir when you rise, because when it is in prayer, it has the ruling of prostration in prayer.
Allah the Exalted said: : And we will stop here because the remaining time will be for questions and the rest of the surah, and even though we promised you that we would complete it, it will be in the next session, if Allah wills.