The scale is described, in absolute terms, as either heavy or light, without explicitly saying that the heaviness is identical with the good deeds or that one weighed item prevails over the other. This itself shows that good deeds possess weight, whereas misdeeds have no weight at all. If nothing but sins are placed on the scale, they add no weight; they remain utterly light. Weight is present only when good deeds accompany them, for good deeds are a luminous form, while sins are darkness.

For this reason al-Ṣiddīq said: “A scale on which nothing but falsehood is laid has every right to be light.”

Accordingly, the unbeliever who has nothing but sins will find his scale completely light. As for the Muslim who has both virtues and offenses, yet whose offenses are greater, his scale will be light because of those excess sins; such a person will be punished and then taken out of the Fire.

Sometimes the scale is spoken of simply in terms of heaviness and lightness, and at other times in terms of one pan outweighing the other. The latter applies only when both opposing items share the attribute of weight and one of them possesses an additional degree of it—just like objects weighed on a balance with two pans: each pan contains something that has weight, and either they balance or one tips the other.

This is illustrated in the hadith: “I saw in a dream that I was placed in one pan and the whole community in the other, and I outweighed the community. Then Abu Bakr was placed in one pan and the community in the other, and Abu…"