Texts of Islam

The Qur'ân, ed. Palmer (SBE9): L. The Chapter of Q

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This is Surah 50 (Qaf) from the Qur'an, presented in E.H. Palmer's 1880 English translation as part of F. Max Müller's Sacred Books of the East series — a Victorian scholarly project to render world scriptures into academic English. The surah addresses skeptics who reject the possibility of resurrection, countering their doubt by pointing to God's original act of creation (the heavens, earth, rain, and growing things) as proof that a second creation — the raising of the dead — is equally within divine power. Its central dramatic sequence depicts Judgment Day in vivid, almost procedural detail: recording angels who log every human word, the trumpet blast, souls each escorted by a "driver" and a "witness," the damned cast into a hell that hungers for more, and the pious welcomed into an eternal paradise. A distinctive theological claim appears in verse 16, where God declares He is "nigher to him than his jugular vein" — asserting an intimate, inescapable divine awareness of human inner life that makes disbelief especially inexcusable. The surah also explicitly rejects the Biblical notion that God rested after creation (a direct counter to Genesis), and closes by instructing the Prophet to practice patience and daily prayer rather than coercion, since his role is reminder, not enforcer.

The Qur'ân, ed. Palmer (SBE9): L. The Chapter of Q

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