that sometimes, when you listen to the Qur’an from someone else, your heart is humbled and you weep, whereas if you were the one reciting it you might not attain that same state.

Ibn Mas‘ūd therefore recited Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, and when he reached the majestic verse, “So how will it be when We bring from every nation a witness and bring you as a witness against these?” (al-Nisāʾ 4:41), he paused—as though to ask: What will your state be then? And what will theirs be?

Here the word kayfa (“how”) is an interrogative; such questioning arrests the soul and rouses the heart: “…when We bring from every nation a witness” on the Day of Resurrection.

Those witnesses are two categories of people:

1. The prophets and messengers, peace be upon them, as the Almighty says: “so that the Messenger might be a witness over you” (al-Baqarah 2:143).
2. The scholars who inherited from the prophets. After the prophets have departed, these scholars become the witnesses over creation: they bear witness that the messengers conveyed the message, and they bear witness against the community that the revelation reached them. How great an honour it is for the people of knowledge to be Allah’s witnesses upon His earth.

He, exalted be He, says: “So how will it be when We bring from every nation a witness and bring you as a witness against these?” And in Sūrat al-Jāthiyah He says: “You will see every nation kneeling, each nation called to its record: ‘Today you will be repaid for what you used to do.’” (45:28)

Once again He says: “So how will it be when We bring from every nation a witness and bring you”—O Muhammad—“as a witness against these [nations]?” What, then, will the situation be?