The Prostration
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE[32:16]
[and] who are impelled to rise from their beds [at night] to call out to their Sustainer in fear and hope; and who spend on others out of what We provide for them as sustenance.

---

* v.16 : Lit., “what is kept hidden for them [by way] of a joy of the eyes,” i.e., of blissful delights, irrespective of whether seen, heard, or felt. The expression “what is kept hidden for them” clearly alludes to the unknowable – and, therefore, only allegorically describable – quality of life in the hereafter. The impossibility of man’s really “imagining” paradise has been summed up by the Prophet in the well-authenticated hadīth: “God says: ‘I have readied for My righteous servants what no eye has ever seen, and no ear has ever heard, and no heart of man has ever conceived’” (Bukhārī and Muslim, on the authority of Abū Hurayrah; also Tirmidhī). This hadīth has always been regarded by the Companions as the Prophet’s own comment on the above verse (cf. Fath al-Bārī VIII, 418 f.).