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Sura 50
Aya 21
21
وَجاءَت كُلُّ نَفسٍ مَعَها سائِقٌ وَشَهيدٌ

Muhammad Asad

And every human being will come forward with [his erstwhile] inner urges and [his] conscious mind,1
  • Lit., "with that which drives (sa'iq) and that which bears witness (shahid)". While the former term evidently circumscribes man's primal urges - and particularly those which drive him into unrestrained self-indulgence and, thus, into sin - the term shahd (rendered by me as "conscious mind") alludes here to the awakening of the deeper layers of man's consciousness, leading to a sudden perception of his own moral reality - the "lifting of the veil" referred to in the next verse - which forces him to "bear witness" against himself (cf. 17:14, 24:24, 36:65, 41:20 ff.).