21وَقالوا لِجُلودِهِم لِمَ شَهِدتُم عَلَينا ۖ قالوا أَنطَقَنَا اللَّهُ الَّذي أَنطَقَ كُلَّ شَيءٍ وَهُوَ خَلَقَكُم أَوَّلَ مَرَّةٍ وَإِلَيهِ تُرجَعونَAli UnalThey will ask their skins, “Why have you borne witness against us?” They will answer: “God Who makes everything speak has made us speak.”1 It is He Who has created you in the first instance, and to Him you are being brought back.As pointed out in the verse The abode of the Hereafter is truly alive (29: 64), and as explained in note 4 to 25: 12, the Qur’ān states that everything in the Abode of Hereafter will be alive. So every part of a human being will bear witness for or against him or her. The restriction of testifying to the skin in verse 21 is because the skin is the boundary between a living creature and the world around it; it is also the physical interface between the creature and other creatures and the world. Hence, it is the location of all contact, good or bad in kind. If, as here implied, it is also the medium where all such contact is recorded (we know in this life only the extremes of contact that leave scars on the skin), then the skin is an ideal witness.