its signs and those possessing understanding might remember’ [Sad 38:29]. Do not be among those whose only share of it is conveying it.
‘A Section’: On the Barren Day
What is barren requires that nothing be born from it, so it has no offspring like itself.
It is called barren because there is no day after it at all. Of the days of the week it is Saturday, the day of everlastingness. Its daylight is light for the people of the Garden, perpetual and never ceasing; its night is darkness upon the people of the Fire, never ceasing.
For this reason those guilty of grave sins who depart from it to the Garden after punishment die within it. Only the people of the Fire who are its people remain within the Fire forever.
The Messenger of God, God’s blessings and peace be upon him, says: ‘As for the people of the Fire who are its people, they neither die within it nor live. But some people were struck by the Fire through their sins, and God caused them to die within it a death’—the report, which is sound.
They sleep a sleep within it, so that they do not feel the Fire when it touches them, when it takes power over the instruments of disobedience, the limbs, by consuming them. Faith prevents it from reaching the heart. This is the care of the affirmation of oneness that was within their hearts.
Knowledge of oneness causes them to die within the Fire the death of the sleeper while asleep, and faith waits for them at the Fire’s gate.
When God raises them from that sleep, having become charcoal, He, glory be to Him, brings them out and immerses them in the River of
