إِنَّمَا يَسْتَجِيبُ الَّذِينَ يَسْمَعُونَ وَالْمَوْتَى يَبْعَثُهُمُ اللّهُ ثُمَّ إِلَيْهِ يُرْجَعُونَ

36. Only they who have the ability to hear can respond (to a call); as for the dead, God will raise them to life, and then to Him they will be returned.⁷

7. Using many literary arts, such as metaphor, simile, comparison, and allusion, the verses of the Qur'ān attain various depths of meaning. This short verse contains several meanings and truths, as well as an admonition:

There are people through whose ears the Qur'ān cannot penetrate to their hearts and who resist faith; these are the “spiritually” deaf. A deaf person cannot hear the call, nor can they respond to it.

One who has the ability to hear cannot be indifferent to the Qur'ān. Only one who can remain indifferent to the Qur'ān and its call can be “deaf.”

Those through whose ears the Qur'ān does not enter are no different from the dead, for like the dead, they have no life in their heart, and one whose heart is not “alive” is “dead,” even if he is physically alive. The true life is the life of the heart. The same is true for biological life, which depends on the health of the heart.

No one will be saved by dying, and no one will stay in the grave eternally. God will raise all of the dead, gathering them together in His Presence and the truth in which they believed or rejected, while in the world will appear in their faces. This second life is eternal, either in bliss or despair.