Can’t Disown Actions

Al-Isra (The Night Journey) – Chapter 17: Verse 13
“Every human being’s action have We tied around his own neck. On the Day of Resurrection We shall produce for him a record which he will find wide open.”
The Arabic phraseology of this verse provides a highly graphic description which uses the word, ‘bird’, in place of ‘action’, as used in the translated text.
Thus we have here a metaphor referring to what flies of a person’s actions and becomes tied around his neck, so that it never parts from him.
A person’s actions do not leave him, and he cannot disown them. The same applies to the wide open record of all his actions. Thus whatever he has done in life is laid bare. He cannot hide, ignore or disown it.
Both descriptions of the bird denoting action and the record thrown open produce a very strong effect that adds to the fears experienced on that very difficult day when nothing remains hidden.
The causes that lead us to ultimate salvation, to our perpetual happiness or unending misery, lie within ourselves.
It is the proper use of our natural faculties, our power of judgment and decision, our preference and choice which makes us earn either happiness or misery.
People who do not understand things properly hold external factors to be responsible for their fortune. If people were to critically examine themselves, they would appreciate that the factors which had put them on the road to their destruction and ultimately led to their undoing lay within themselves – their own bad character traits and bad decisions. Their destruction was not thrust upon them by outside factors.

Posted in: Quran