Tafsir of As-Saffat 37:24

(وَقِفُوهُمْ): That is, detain them at the station of reckoning.

(إِنَّهُم مَّسْئُولُونَ): Regarding their beliefs and their deeds. In the Hadith it is stated: "The feet of a servant shall not move until he is questioned about five things: his youth, how he spent it; his life, how he exhausted it; his wealth, from where he earned it and on what he spent it; and his knowledge, what he did with it."

Ibn Mas’ud said: "They shall be questioned about 'There is no god but Allah' (La ilaha illa Allah)." It is also narrated from him that they shall be questioned about drinking cold water, as a form of mockery towards them. Some of the Imamiyyah narrated from Ibn Jubayr, from Ibn Abbas, that they shall be questioned about the wilayah (guardianship) of Ali—may Allah, the Exalted, honor his countenance. They also narrated this from Abu Sa'id al-Khudri.

The most appropriate of these views is that the questioning concerns beliefs and deeds, the foremost of which is 'There is no god but Allah,' and included in this is the wilayah of Ali—may Allah, the Exalted, honor his countenance—as well as the wilayah of his brethren, the Rightly Guided Caliphs—may Allah, the Exalted, be pleased with them all.

The apparent meaning of the verse is that the detention for questioning occurs after they have been guided to the path of Hell, meaning they have been made to know it and have been directed toward it, not that they have already been entered into it or arrived at its destination. It is permitted that the "path of Hell" refers to the road they take from their graves to their abode, which is stretched out, so it is possible for the detention to take place at some point along it, delayed from another, though this involves a certain degree of far-fetchedness.

It has been said that the detention for questioning occurs before the aforementioned command, for the waw (conjunction) does not necessitate sequence. It has also been said that the detention occurs after the command, upon their arrival at the Fire, and the questioning concerns that which is expressed by the saying of Allah, the Exalted...