Al-Hajj (The Pilgrimage)

56. “On that Day the Sovereignty will be Allah’s; He will judge between them; and those who believe and do righteous deeds will be in gardens of bliss.”

57. “And those who disbelieve and reject Our signs, these, for them, shall be a disgraceful chastisement.”

The criterion of Allah’s Judgment on the Day of Hereafter will be the belief and the disbelief of human beings. There, the retribution of those who arrogantly have not accepted the Truth will be a humiliating punishment.

Here, the holy Qur’an points to the absolute Sovereignty of Allah on the Resurrection Day, where it says:

“On that Day the Sovereignty will be Allah’s;…”

This, of course, does not allocate to the Resurrection Day, but today and always the absolute Sovereignty belongs to Allah, yet, since there are some other kinds of owners and rulers in this world, too, (though the realm of their authority is very limited and weak with an apparent and formal aspect), there may arise this thought that there are some rulers and owners other than Allah; but on the Day of Hereafter, where all these matters are absent, this fact will be made manifest more than any other times, and all will understand that the Ruler and the Owner is Only the One, Allah.

In other words, here there are two kinds of sovereignty and ownership: the first is the true sovereignty which is the sovereignty of the Creator over the creatures, and the second is the nominal and conventional sovereignty, which is current among people.

These two both exist in this world while in the Hereafter all the nominal and conventional sovereignties will be dismissed and there will remain only the true sovereignty of the Creator of the worlds.¹

However, since the true owner is Allah, He will be the true Ruler, too.

Therefore, He will govern over and judge between all human beings whether they are believers or disbelievers, the consequence of which is the same thing that the Qur’an has stated at the end of this very verse, where it says:

“…He will judge between them; and those who believe and do righteous deeds will be in gardens of bliss.”

They will abide in some blessed gardens where all merits are found, and whatever goodness and blessing they desire they will find available therein.

Then, in the next verse, it says:

“And those who disbelieve and reject Our signs, these, for them, shall be a disgraceful chastisement.”

What an expressive and lively meaning it is! There will be disgraceful chastisement then for them as a result of those obstinacies, conceits and arrogances they wrongfully had against the servants of Allah.

These qualities cause them to fall to the lowest degree of degradation and humiliation; and we know that when, in different verses, the Qur’an qualifies the Divine punishment as to be: ‘painful’, ‘great’, and ‘disgraceful’, each of them is appropriate with the kind of the sin that such people have committed.

It is interesting that, when speaking of the believers, the Qur’an points to two things: the Faith and the righteous deed, and, on the contrary, when speaking of disbelievers, it points to two other things: ‘disbelief ‘ and ‘their rejection of the Divine verses, each of which, in fact, is a combination of their internal belief and their external practical effects, since the man’s deeds often originate from a mental and ideological source.