Sūrah 1 · Āyāt 5–7

Al-Fātiḥa 5–7 — iyyāka naʿbudu wa iyyāka nastaʿīn · ihdina l-ṣirāṭa l-mustaqīm · ṣirāṭa lladhīna anʿamta ʿalayhim …

Here the sūra pivots from praise to petition, and from speaking about God to speaking to Him: "Thee alone do we worship, and Thee alone do we ask for help. Guide us upon the Straight Path — the path of those You have favoured, not those who incurred wrath, nor those who go astray." Uniquely, all six commentaries speak here (Tafsīr al-Qummī, silent in the earlier passages, is present for vv. 5–7).

Iyyāka naʿbudu wa iyyāka nastaʿīn (v. 5). al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī both note the turn from report (khabar) to direct address (khiṭāb) as a known Arab idiom, and stress the exclusivity carried by the fronted iyyāka: "we worship You and none besides, and seek Your help and none besides." Both define ʿibāda as the utmost lowliness and submission, merited only by the Source of life, power, and desire — hence God alone. al-Mīzān (Ṭabāṭabāʾī) reads the shift as the servant now addressing the One he has come to "witness," and adds al-Ṣādiq's tripartite division of worship — out of fear (slaves), for reward (hirelings), or out of love (the noble, "the most excellent"). al-Baḥrānī supplies the memorable scene of Imam Jaʿfar silencing the Qadarī debater precisely at iyyāka nastaʿīn — "From whom do you seek help, and what need have you of help if the matter is [up] to you?" — turning the verse against the denial of divine aid.

Ihdina l-ṣirāṭa l-mustaqīm (v. 6). al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī take hidāya as both direction and enabling grace (tawfīq), and resolve the old puzzle — why ask for a guidance already given — through devotion, the seeking of increase in grace (47:17), and the continuance of moral responsibility. For the referent of "the Straight Path" both list four views — the Book of God, Islam, God's religion, and "the Prophet and the Imams who stand in his place" (the last "related in our reports") — and both conclude that the verse is best taken in its full generality. al-Mīzān argues that God ascribes to Himself only one straight path (singular) though many "ways" (plural): it is the single road free of all deviation, true monotheism in belief and deed. al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī make the Imāmī reading explicit and central: the Straight Path is "the road to the knowledge of God," which in this world is the Imam of obligatory obedience — "It is the Commander of the Faithful, ʿAlī, and the knowledge of him" (proof: 43:4, ʿaliyyun ḥakīm in the Mother of the Book) — and the Imams' own declaration, "We are the Straight Path" (ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn). The same sources preserve the eschatological ṣirāṭ — the bridge over Hell, "finer than a hair, sharper than a sword," a three-thousand-year crossing — over which only the knower of the Imam passes safely.

Ṣirāṭa lladhīna anʿamta ʿalayhim … (v. 7). al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī identify "those favoured" with the company of 4:69 — the prophets, the truthful, the witnesses, and the righteous — and, with the consensus of the exegetes, read "those who incurred wrath" as the Jews (5:60; 2:65) and "those who go astray" as the Christians (5:77), while al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī cautions that each group in truth shares both traits. Both deploy the full grammatical apparatus (ghayr as attribute or substitute; the Baṣran-vs-Kūfan dispute over the lā of wa lā l-ḍāllīn). al-Mīzān maps the verse onto three classes — the favoured who never deviate, those upon whom wrath descends, and those who wander lost. al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī add the Imāmī taʾwīl: "those favoured" are Muḥammad and his progeny, and the Shīʿa "favoured with the walāya of ʿAlī" ([25]–[26]); the Imam al-ʿAskarī's narration from the Commander of the Faithful both keeps the 4:69 reading and universalizes it ("everyone who disbelieves in God is an object of wrath and a strayer"), while other reports gloss al-maghḍūb as the nuṣṣāb and al-ḍāllīn as the doubters "who do not know the Imam."

Two capstones recur: the qasamtu l-ṣalāt tradition (al-Ṭūsī, via Jābir) in which God divides the sūra between Himself and His servant — praise for Him, petition for the servant — followed by the Imāmī ruling against saying āmīn; and al-Ṭabarsī's closing naẓm, tracing the whole sūra as the soul's ascent from naming God, through praise and acknowledgement of His lordship and judgement, to direct address, the plea for help, and the prayer to be joined to the favoured and kept from the paths of wrath and error.