"There Is Not One of You But Will Come To It": Why Does Everyone Pass Over the Ṣirāṭ?

Occasion: A Fajr khatira delivered on 10 July 2025 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

How often Sūrat Maryam makes its reader pause in reflection to understand the meanings in it, and among that is the saying of the Lord of the Worlds, glory be to Him: ﴿وَإِن مِّنكُمْ إِلَّا وَارِدُهَا ۚ كَانَ عَلَىٰ رَبِّكَ حَتْمًا مَّقْضِيًّا﴾ ("There is not one of you but will come to it; this is, upon your Lord, a decree that must be fulfilled").^[1]

Why Does Everyone Pass Over the Ṣirāṭ?

The meaning of the verse, as the people of tafsīr and the people of knowledge mention, is that all of creation passes over the bridge set over the back of Hell. So the questioner asks: why? Why do all people pass, the God-fearing among them and the wicked, the believer and the polytheist, the sincere and the hypocrite? Why do we need this passing at all?

And the answer is that the Lord of Might, glory and exaltation be to Him, made people a promise that He fulfills for them: He promised them that they would see perfect justice and complete fairness on the day of the great scene. And if the people from the beginning had not passed over Hell and had not come to it, and had gone on at once to Paradise and entered it, and were then told afterward about the Fire, how would the understanding be?

One Who Has Experienced Is Not Like One Who Has Heard

Take an example: a healthy man who has never been ill in all his life and whose body has never been touched by harm; if you tell him about illness it is a theoretical affirmation; he says "may Allah heal him" while speaking with his tongue, and perhaps the meaning comes to his mind to some extent. But if he has experienced illness and lived it, and been burned by its effect and its pain, and tossed in his bed, and undergone surgery or entered a hospital, and then is told about a sick man, the sentence comes out of him differently: "May Allah heal him." What is the difference between the two cases? The difference between the state of one who has experienced and one who has not, between one who knew things theoretically and one who saw them with his own eye.

And the kinds of injustice that exist in the world are very many, varied and diverse. So when people are told on the Day of Resurrection about the Fire in which the wrongdoers were punished, one of them says: Yes, our Lord, glory be to Him, is merciful, He did not punish him in the way that would heal my heart, for he wronged me and hurt me and did to me such and such. But if he passes among the company of those who pass over the Fire, and sees with his own eye the end of the wrongdoers and the places of those inventors of falsehood in worldly life, and then is saved and enters Paradise, and is told that so-and-so is in the Fire, he almost feels pity for him from how much he saw of what he will suffer.

"We Will Save" Implies That They Were In It

And our Lord, glory be to Him, tells us in His saying: ﴿ثُمَّ نُنَجِّي الَّذِينَ اتَّقَوا وَّنَذَرُ الظَّالِمِينَ فِيهَا﴾ ("Then We will save those who feared Allah, and We will leave the wrongdoers in it")^[2] and salvation, or saving, is only for the one who is drowning, who is afflicted, who is struck, who is in trial or has fallen into it. So imagine, with the example we gave, that so-and-so is ill; the salvation of Allah, blessed and exalted, for him is by healing. So how do we say "Allah saved so-and-so from" such and such unless he was in it in the first place? So it is as though the Lord of the Worlds, glory be to Him, when He says: ﴿ثُمَّ نُنَجِّي الَّذِينَ اتَّقَوا﴾ ("Then We will save those who feared Allah"), means that those who feared Allah were also in Hell with the rest.

And here we say: how do we picture that? Let us ask: what is the ground of anyone's deserving Paradise in this world? That I say I was among the believers, among the God-fearing, among the obedient, among the successful, among the triumphant. Is this the making of your hand and your work, or is it from the guidance of Allah, blessed and exalted, to you in the first place? So it is as though His saying ﴿نُنَجِّي الَّذِينَ اتَّقَوا﴾ ("We will save those who feared Allah"), if it is not realized in that Allah truly saves them on the Day of Resurrection, then He has saved them with more guidance and granting of success in their worldly life. So if one of us now sees himself in his world upon obedience, that is a kind of Allah's saving him from being one day with those immersed in the Fire.

Praise Be to Allah for the Salvation We Do Not See

And yet we hardly hear anyone say: Praise be to Allah that we are in prayer. We have not heard: Praise be to Allah that we were guided to this Qur'an. We have not heard: Praise be to Allah that we kept our manners in moments of dispute. We have not heard: Praise be to Allah that I was guided to put my hand to my pocket to spend in the way of the Lord of the Worlds, glory and exaltation be to Him. We have not heard: Praise be to Allah that I felt the greatness of Allah, blessed and exalted, in some moment, and remembered Allah spontaneously, or my eye overflowed with a tear of humility before the Lord of the Worlds, glory and exaltation be to Him, moved by what is before Him.

The Inventors of Falsehood and Their Domination

And after these verses our Lord, glory be to Him, shows us examples of those who invented lies against Allah, Mighty and Majestic, and transgressed their limits with the rest of humanity, to the point that they took a son for the Most Merciful,^[3] which is a statement of tremendous weight in the heavens and the earth and in all of Allah's creation, yet they paid no heed to it, and did not handle the Divine Essence well. Glory be to the One whose speech this is!

And look at the kinds of fabrication among those gentlemen, the leaders on the back of this planet, who lead all of creation, who speak in the name of the power they hold in their hands, in their black briefcases that they carry with them on planes: if we wanted to destroy the whole planet we would. They speak from this grandeur, and entirely forget the saying of the Lord of the Worlds, glory be to Him: ﴿وَكَمْ أَهْلَكْنَا قَبْلَهُم مِّن قَرْنٍ هَلْ تُحِسُّ مِنْهُم مِّنْ أَحَدٍ أَوْ تَسْمَعُ لَهُمْ﴾ ("And how many a generation have We destroyed before them! Do you perceive of them anyone, or hear from them...")^[4] O Allah, no! Allah, the Most High, destroyed the people of ʿĀd and the people of Thamūd, and destroyed the people of Nūḥ, and destroyed the greatest Pharaoh, who said: ﴿أَنَا۠ رَبُّكُمُ ٱلْأَعْلَىٰ﴾ ("I am your lord, the most high")^[5] and who said: ﴿أَلَيْسَ لِي مُلْكُ مِصْرَ وَهَٰذِهِ ٱلْأَنْهَٰرُ تَجْرِي مِن تَحْتِيٓ﴾ ("Do I not have the dominion of Egypt, and these rivers flowing beneath me?")^[6] so that perhaps people may take a lesson.

And at Our Own Small Level

But at the lesser level, we do not want to wrong anyone in our small lives, nor to exceed our limits in our dealing with the law of Allah in our poor lives, nor for our hands to reach out to what is not lawful for us in our little wealth, nor to exceed in our manners or our conditions anything that the Lord of the Worlds has set as a limit for us.

I ask Allah, the Most High, the All-Powerful, to let us enjoy obedience to Him, and to make us stop at His limits, and not to make us taste the harm of disobedience, and that we not exceed any of His limits, Mighty and Majestic. May Allah keep your day safe, and bless you and bless in you.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat Maryam, verse 71. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat Maryam, verse 72, and its completion is: ﴿جِثِيًّا﴾; the speaker stopped at "in it." ^[3]: Editor's documentation: He alludes to what is in Sūrat Maryam (verses 88–92) of the denial of their saying that the Most Merciful has taken a son; the speaker did not recite the verse in this passage. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat Maryam, verse 98, and its completion is: ﴿رِكْزًا﴾; and in the transcript "or hear from them" is followed by a garbled word. ^[5]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Nāziʿāt, verse 24. ^[6]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Zukhruf, verse 51.