Tafsir of An-Nahl 16:52

This is a conjunctive clause to His, the Almighty’s, saying: “He is but one God,” or it is a predicate, or it is an inaugural statement brought to confirm the reason for the submissiveness of everything within them to Him, the Almighty, alone, and to verify the exclusivity of awe to Him, the Exalted. The prepositional phrase is placed first to strengthen the meaning of exclusivity inherent in the particle lam (to Him). The same applies to what follows; meaning: to Him, the Exalted alone, belongs all that is in the heavens and the earth, in terms of creation and ownership.

Meaning: obedience and submission, as this is one of its meanings, and it is narrated from Ibn ‘Atiyyah and others.

Meaning: obligatory and perpetual, having no cessation, due to the established fact that He, the Almighty, is the only God worthy of being feared. The interpretation of wasiban as mentioned is narrated from Ibn ‘Abbas, al-Hasan, ‘Ikrimah, Mujahid, al-Dahhak, and a group of others, and they cited the lines of Abu al-Aswad al-Du’ali:

I do not seek the scant praise whose survival is but a day, at the price of the reproach of time, entirely, perpetually (wasiban).

Ibn al-Anbari said: It is derived from al-wasb, meaning fatigue or its intensity, being a pattern of fa‘il used for attribution, as in his saying: "And my heart became infatuated (fatinan) by him," meaning possessing wasb (fatigue) and hardship—and from here, religion (al-din) is termed taklif (obligation/burden). Al-Rabi’ ibn Anas said: wasiban means "pure," and this is also reported from al-Farra’. It is said: al-din means dominion, and al-wasib means eternal; this is made unlikely by the saying of Umayyah ibn al-Salt: "To Him is the religion, ever-present, and to Him is the kingdom, and praise is His in every state." Others said: al-din means recompense, and al-wasib is as mentioned previously; meaning: to Him, the Exalted, belongs the recompense eternally—His reward for the obedient and His punishment for the disobedient never ceasing. Regardless, wasiban is in the accusative case as a state (hal) of the pronoun implicit in the prepositional phrase [in "to Him"], with the prepositional phrase acting as the governing agent for it; or it is a state of "the religion," and the prepositional phrase is the agent according to the view of those who permit the difference between the agent of the state and the agent of its possessor. This verse is cited as evidence that the actions of servants are created by Him, the Almighty.

The interrogative particle (al-hamzah) is for denial, and the fa is for sequence. Meaning: After what has been established regarding the exclusivity of all existence in its prostration to Him, the Almighty; and the fact that such is His perfection; and His prohibition against taking two gods; and the fact that religion is His alone—perpetually—which necessitates the exclusivity of piety (awe) to Him, the Almighty—do you [then] fear other than Him?

The thing denied is fearing other than Allah, not the act of fearing in the absolute sense; that is why "the other" (ghayr) is brought forward. The interrogative is better understood as not being for exclusivity—lest the objection arise that the denial of dedicating piety to other than Him does not negate the permissibility of fearing [in general]. It is said: It is valid to consider exclusivity through the denial, thus the fronting is for the exclusivity of the denial, not the denial of exclusivity. In al-Bahr, it is stated that this interrogation entails reproach and amazement; meaning: after you have known of His oneness—the Almighty—and that all that is beside Him belongs to Him and is in need of Him, how can you fear and be in awe of other than Him?