may Allah be pleased with him. He was a slight man, and once he climbed an arak tree during a strong wind; the wind shook his thin legs and the people laughed at them. The Prophet ﷺ said, “Are you laughing—or, he said, are you astonished—at the slenderness of his shanks? By the One in whose hand my soul rests, they will be heavier on the scale than Mount Uhud.” This indicates that the individual himself may be weighed.

The essential point is that on the Day of Resurrection either the deeds, the written records, or the doers will be weighed: “So those whose scales are heavy—it is they who will prosper; and those whose scales are light—it is they who have ruined themselves; in Hell they will abide forever” (23:102, 103).

We ask Allah to make us and you among those whose scales are heavy and among the successful who earn Allah’s good pleasure. Allah is the One who grants success.

His words—Exalted is He—“so it is they who have ruined themselves” mean that they lost their own souls. They were sent into this world, the messengers came to them, and the truth was made clear, yet—God forbid—they obstinately rejected it and grew arrogant, thereby forfeiting any benefit from their time on earth. Allah the Exalted says, “Say: Indeed, the losers are those who have ruined their own souls and their families on the Day of Resurrection; truly, that is the manifest loss” (39:5).

He then makes it clear that just as they will be punished bodily, they will also be punished inwardly: they will be reproached and rebuked, and it will be said to them, “Were My verses not recited to you, yet you used to deny them …”