✦ AT A GLANCE ✦
القارعة
Al-Qari'ah
✦ Why this name
The Striking Calamity — al-Qari'ah, a name for the Day that strikes hearts with terror.
✦ When it came
Meccan. Like Al-Haqqah, it opens by repeating its own name before explaining it.
✦ The story
*"The Striking Calamity. What is the Striking Calamity? And what can make you know what the Striking Calamity is?"*
Then two images, and both are about smallness. People will be *like moths, dispersed* — scattered, weightless, drawn to a light. And the mountains, the heaviest things anyone can imagine, will be *like fluffed-up wool.*
And then the scales. Whoever's are heavy will be in a pleasant life. And whoever's are light — *his refuge will be an abyss.*
The surah ends the way it began, with a question about a word: *"And what can make you know what that is? It is a fire, intensely hot."*