المدثر

Five instructions, in five short verses, and the mission begins: *Arise and warn. Your Lord — magnify. Your clothing — purify. And uncleanliness — avoid. And do not confer favour to acquire more.*

Then it records, almost forensically, a man deliberating about what to call the Quran. He thought, and assessed, then *may he be destroyed, how he assessed* — and again — then he looked, then frowned and scowled, then turned back and was arrogant, and finally said: *"This is nothing but magic imitated from others."* The Quran preserving a man's whole internal process of arriving at a bad conclusion.

And its verdict on responsibility is stark: *"Every soul, for what it has earned, will be retained"* — except the companions of the right, who ask the guilty what brought them there. The answer they give lists four things, and the first two are: we were not of those who prayed, and we did not feed the poor.