Synthesis: Sūrat al-Furqān 21–34

Triangulated from Ṭabarsī's Majmaʿ al-Bayān [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan], al-Qummī [qummi], al-Ṭūsī's al-Tibyān [tusi_al_tibyan], al-Baḥrānī's al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan], and al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī's al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan] — all five present for this passage.

Human-review flags: al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan] is flagged: its two fetched units are coarse (covering 21–31 and 32–40), so the long argument was faithfully condensed and material on verses 35–40 was set aside as out-of-passage. The two largest al-Burhān narrations (the Muʿādh ḥadīth and the Medina sermon of ʿAlī) were also abridged with structure preserved.

What the passage says. The deniers of the Resurrection demand that angels descend to them or that they see God; they are told that the only day they will see angels brings no glad tidings, only the cry "a forbidden barrier" (ḥijran maḥjūran). Their deeds become scattered dust; the God-wary hold the best abode. The wrongdoer bites his hands, wishing he had taken "a way with the Messenger" and not "so-and-so" as a friend; the Messenger complains his people abandoned the Qurʾān; God appoints every prophet an enemy among the guilty; and the demand "why not the whole Qurʾān at once?" is answered — it was sent piecemeal to strengthen the Prophet's heart.

The composite objection. Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] frames 25:21 with 25:7 as one dilemma: if prophethood is a human-attainable thing, we'd have it; if a divine gift, send an angel — answered by [stating] they will see angels, but in another plane. Ṭabarsī [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and al-Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan] converge with al-Jubbāʾī's reading that the demand to see God betrays that they were corporealists (mujassima). Both also note (citing the Tihāma/Hudhayl dialect) that lā yarjūna under negation means "do not fear." On ḥijran maḥjūran, Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī, and al-Mīzān all preserve the dual classical reading — either the angels barring the guilty from glad tidings (Qatāda, al-Ḍaḥḥāk) or the guilty uttering the old Jāhilī refuge-formula (Mujāhid, Ibn Jurayj). On the qirāʾāt, Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī give matching analyses of tashaqqaq/tatashaqqaq and Ibn Kathīr's nunazzil versus nuzzila.

A barzakh reading. Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] notably diverges from "the exegetes": where Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī gloss "the Day they see the angels" as the Resurrection, he argues from 6:93 and 4:97 that it is the moment of death (the barzakh), since one warns a denier with the first day he sees angels. He reads "scattered dust" as parabolic representation (tamthīl) of divine overwhelming, harmonizing it with verses that nullify deeds already in this life.

The Shīʿī taʾwīl. al-Qummī [qummi] and al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] supply the narrational layer absent from the others: the deeds-become-dust are those who fasted and prayed yet "seized the forbidden and denied the merit (faḍl) of the Commander of the Faithful" (al-Bāqir; and per Sulaymān b. Khālid, the deeds of "those who hate us and our Shīʿa"). The "cloud" of 25:25 is identified with Amīr al-Muʾminīn, and "the way with the Messenger" (25:27) with ʿAlī, while "so-and-so" is read as "the Second" — al-Burhān citing the reading of ʿAlī's codex (muṣḥaf). al-Burhān anchors 25:30's "abandoned Qurʾān" in ʿAlī's sermon ("I am the Reminder from which he strayed... the Qurʾān which he abandoned") and 25:31 in al-Ḥasan's pulpit rebuttal of Muʿāwiya. Crucially, al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] handles these honestly: he reports the "way = ʿAlī" narrations but classifies them as baṭn (inner meaning) or jary (applicative correspondence), "not tafsīr in any respect" — even as his own reading ("the chief cause of the misguided's straying is allegiance to the friends of Satan") points the same direction.

Why piecemeal (25:32). Here the present sources cohere most richly. Ṭabarsī [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and al-Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan] give the classical answers: fresh revelation per event fortifies the Prophet's heart and increases his insight; earlier Books came at once because given to literate prophets (Moses wrote and read), while the Qurʾān came to an unlettered (ummī) prophet; and the Qurʾān contains abrogating/abrogated verses and answers to live questions. al-Ṭūsī adds Abū ʿUbayda's gloss that "strengthen your heart" = "set your soul at ease and embolden you." al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] deepens and partly overturns this: gradual revelation plants teaching firmly because a lesson delivered at the moment of need roots itself in the soul — his analogy of teaching a physician with the patient present versus in the abstract. He unifies 25:32–34 as one answer (heart-strengthening + meeting every objection "with the truth and a finer exposition"), reads rattalnāhu as the safeguard preserving the links between installments, and explicitly rejects as weak the very "unlettered-prophet / iʿjāz / nāsikh-mansūkh" reasons the others give — holding the Qurʾānic statement itself to be the complete answer.

Sources present: tabarsi_majma_al_bayan, qummi, tusi_al_tibyan, bahrani_al_burhan, tabatabai_al_mizan; silent: none.