بِسمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحمٰنِ الرَّحيمِ
ْإِذَا ٱلسَّمَآءُ ٱنفَطَرَت
When the sky is rent apart.
EXPOSITION
The renting of the sky can have a literal as well as a metaphorical meaning. Literally, it would mean the stars and planets would lose their centrifugal and gravitational forces and therefore leave their orbits, leading to a collapse of the solar system and even the universe as we know it, and paving the way for a new world. This would agree with verses such as, The day the earth is transformed into another earth and the heavens [as well] (14:48), and, When the sun is wound up, when the stars scatter, when the mountains are set moving (81:1-3).
Metaphorically, ‘sky’ represents the layer that separates the natural world from the unseen world. This ‘sky’ of separation that veils man from the real world whilst he is caged in his earthly body, is necessary to support man’s life on earth, driven by his natural instincts; but on the Day of Judgement, When the sky is stripped off (81:11), the real world that has always been present, albeit hidden, is revealed. So, verses such as, Indeed those who deny Our signs and are disdainful of them – the gates of the heaven will not be opened for them (7:40) could mean that the higher angelic realm will not be accessible to the faithless as it will to the faithful. Or, in the words of Ghazālī:
As for the servant, the door to the world of dominion (bāb al-malakūt) will not be open for him and he will not become ‘dominional’ unless, in relation to him, the earth changes to other than the earth, and the heavens [to other than the heavens] (cf. 14:48). Then everything that enters into the senses and imagination will become his earth, and this includes the heavens; and whatever stands beyond the senses will be his heaven. This is the first ascent for every traveller who has begun his journey to the proximity of the Lordly presence.
One reason we cannot limit the meaning of the verse to the physical sky is because the Quran often speaks of seven heavens, but only mentions the lowest heaven as being adorned with the finery of stars (37:6-7). So we can only assume this first or lowest heaven as being physical in the human sense; yet the renting affects all the heavens and begins from above them: The heavens (samāwāt) are about to be rent apart from above them (42:5). The meaning of ‘seven heavens’ is also explained under 41:12.
A question arises as to why the heavens will need to be rent asunder. Several exegetes rely on 25:25 as proof that the heavens will be rent asunder for a specific purpose – the majestic descent of angels: The day when the sky with its clouds will split open, and the angels will be sent down [in a majestic] descent (25:25). But in more general terms, when all such apocalyptic verses in this and other chapters of the Quran are reviewed, all of this destruction appears to be a part of the divine plan to initiate the collapse of the present world as we know it, and the removal of the current structure to make way for a new cosmos and a completely new world.
It is also natural that all things must come to an end: Even as He brought you forth in the beginning, so will you return (7:29). Hence, as a result of the momentous event in which everything falls apart in awe of its Lord, all things also testify to their ephemerality and that only lasting is the face of your Lord, majestic and munificent (55:27).
The renting of the sky is also mentioned as the opening verse of Sūrat al-Inshiqāq (84), but this does not prove conclusively that it is the trigger in the chain of events at the hour of doom, because, firstly, the renting of the sky is not mentioned as the opening verse in other places (such as 25:25, 55:37, 69:16, 73:18, 78:19, and 81:11), and secondly, all subsequent verses listing the phenomena at the hour of doom are separated by the conjunction particle (ḥarf al-ʿatf) wāw instead of fāʾ. The latter enforces sequence (taʿqīb) or immediate succession (tartīb), besides being a conjunction particle, whereas the former does not.
Mystic-philosophers like Ghazālī, Mullā Ṣadrā, and his student Fayḍ Kāshānī, also relate the collapse and restructure of the cosmos to the collapse and restructure of man; for ‘man is a microcosm within which is everything in the macrocosm’ and ‘the key to knowledge of the Day of Resurrection is knowledge of the human soul’. Mullā Ṣadrā explains:
Know also that we have two resurrections – a smaller and a greater. The greater belongs to all creatures … the smaller resurrection is death, because of the Prophet’s words: ‘When someone dies, his resurrection has stood forth.’ Everything in the greater resurrection has an equivalent in the smaller, as has been detailed in its place.
So, everything in the greater resurrection – which is the death of all the individuals in the cosmos – has an equivalent in the smaller resurrection. When your body – which is your earth specific to you – is destroyed through death, then the earth will have been shaken with a mighty shaking (99:1). When your bones – which are the mountains of your earth – decay, then [the earth and the mountains will have been lifted up] and crushed with a single blow (69:14), so your mountains will be scattered like ashes (20:105). When your heart – which is the sun of your world – is darkened at the [soul’s] extraction, then your sun will have been folded up (81:1). When your senses are nullified, then your stars will have become opaque (81:2). When your brain is split apart, then your heaven will have been split apart (55:37). When your eyes burst from the terror of death, then your seas will have been made to burst open (82:3). When your potencies are dispersed and your troops are scattered, then your wild animals will have been mustered (81:5). And when your spirit and your potencies depart from the body, then your earth will have been stretched, and it will cast forth what is within it and become empty (84:3-4).
[1] Ghazālī, The Niche of Lights, Trans. David Buchman (BYU Press, 1998).
[2] Qurtubi, 20/244; Alusi, 15/267; Nawawi, 2/609.
[3] Ṣadrā, Elixir of the Gnostics, Trans. W Chittick (BYU Press, 2003).
[4] Ṣadrā, Elixir of the Gnostics, Trans. W Chittick (BYU Press, 2003), pp. 14-15.