Surah Al-Furqan – Yasser Salama

Al-Furqan ("The Standard", more often rendered "The Criterion") is the 25th surah of the Quran. A Meccan surah of 77 verses, it is 42nd in the traditional order of revelation, after Ya-Sin, and straddles the eighteenth and nineteenth juz'. Its name comes from its first verse, which blesses the One who "sent down the Criterion to His servant": al-Furqan, what separates truth from falsehood, designates the Quran itself.

Main themes

• The objections of the Meccans: the Quran is a fabrication or "tales of the ancients" dictated to him (25:4–5); why does this messenger eat food and walk in the markets (25:7)? Why was the Quran not sent down all at once? So that God might strengthen the Prophet's heart with it, revealing it in measured stages (25:32).
• The wrongdoer biting his hands on the Last Day (25:27–29), and the Messenger's complaint: "My Lord, my people have treated this Quran as something abandoned" (25:30).
• The fate of earlier peoples such as 'Ad and Thamud (25:35–40), and signs in creation such as the lengthening shadow and two seas kept apart by a barrier (25:45–54). When told to prostrate to the Most Merciful, the deniers ask "And what is the Most Merciful?" (25:60, a verse of prostration).
• The portrait of the "servants of the Most Merciful" (25:63–77): they walk on the earth humbly and answer the ignorant with "peace", spend the night in prayer, spend without extravagance or stinginess, shun idolatry, murder and adultery, and do not bear false witness. Whoever repents, God will change their bad deeds into good ones (25:70). They pray: "Our Lord, grant us joy in our spouses and children, and make us an example for the God-conscious" (25:74).

In the Sunnah

'Umar ibn al-Khattab heard Hisham ibn Hakim recite this surah differently from the way he had learned it and brought him to the Prophet ﷺ, who approved both readings and said that the Quran had been revealed in seven modes (ahruf) (al-Bukhari and Muslim). Ibn Mas'ud asked which sin is gravest; the Prophet ﷺ named associating a rival with God, then killing one's child for fear it would share one's food, then adultery with a neighbour's wife, and 25:68 was revealed confirming this (al-Bukhari and Muslim).