Texts of Islam

The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'ân,: 32. as-Sajdah: The Adoration

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This is a Quranic surah (chapter 32, "As-Sajdah" / The Adoration) in M.M. Pickthall's early 20th-century English translation, part of his landmark work *The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'ān* — one of the first translations by a native English-speaking Muslim. The surah opens by asserting its own divine origin and defending the Prophet Muhammad against charges of fabrication, then moves through a compressed theology of creation: God made the heavens, earth, and humanity (from clay, then reproductive fluid, then divine spirit), and governs the cosmos across timescales incomprehensible to humans. Its central preoccupation is eschatology — the certainty of resurrection and judgment, the futile regret of the guilty who will beg to return to life and act rightly, the contrasting fates of believers (paradise) and evildoers (eternal fire). A distinctive structural move is the surah's use of natural phenomena — water reviving barren land, the destruction of past civilizations — as empirical "signs" meant to provoke recognition of God's power among skeptics. The chapter closes with a reminder that Moses also received scripture, linking Islam to the Abrahamic prophetic tradition, before ending on a note of patient confidence: the Prophet is told to withdraw from doubters and wait, since the outcome is already determined.

The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'ân,: 32. as-Sajdah: The Adoration

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