53. An-Najm

An-Najm ('The Star'), 62 Meccan verses, describes the Prophet's vision of the angel 'at the farthest lote-tree' (53:14-18), a key text of the ascension tradition. It rejects the three goddesses of the Meccans as mere names (53:19-23) and ends with the first prostration performed publicly in Mecca. The rejection of the three goddesses in this juz's verses (53:19-23), al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat, is the setting for the so-called Satanic Verses (gharaniq) narrative, in which some early sources allege verses briefly conceding the goddesses' intercessory power were recited before being withdrawn as satanic interpolation; the historicity of the episode was already strongly challenged by classical scholars, most rejecting it by the thirteenth century on both theological grounds (the impeccability of prophets) and weak chains of transmission, and it remains debated rather than accepted among modern academic scholars of the Quran's formation.

The surah closes with the Quran's first recorded public prostration (sajda), performed, tradition holds, by Muslims and Meccan polytheists together on hearing it recited. The surah's description of the Prophet's vision as occurring 'at the farthest lote-tree' (53:14) is read by classical exegetes together with the parallel Al-Isra account as describing the same night journey and ascension from two different angles, though scholars differ on whether the vision described here is of Gabriel or, as some early reports controversially suggested, of God directly, a question later theological schools settled in different directions. Ibn Kathir and al-Tabari both record these differing early opinions without resolving them by a single authoritative ruling.

An-Najm states that 'no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another,' and that man will have nothing except what he has striven for, and that his striving will be seen (53:38-40), verses classical theology cites as a foundational statement of individual moral accountability, read alongside the very similar declaration in Fatir as one of two clear Quranic anchors for the doctrine that guilt, merit and effort are not transferable between persons regardless of kinship, lineage or relationship to a righteous ancestor.

Commentators read the verse as addressing, among other things, pre-Islamic Arabian and other ancient beliefs in inherited merit through ancestry, insisting instead that a person's own effort, not descent from a righteous or notable forebear, determines their standing. The verse is cited in later Islamic theological writing when distinguishing Islamic teaching on personal responsibility from doctrines elsewhere that emphasise inherited guilt or vicarious atonement through another's action, a comparison this passage's classical commentators draw explicitly, framing the distinction as a considered theological position rather than an incidental difference of emphasis. The same principle is cited in modern Islamic writing against claims of guaranteed salvation through birth, community membership or association alone, independent of a person's own conduct.