al-Raʿd 13:15-16

"Whoever is in the heavens and the earth prostrates to God — willingly or unwillingly — and their shadows too, morning and evening. Say: 'Are the blind and the seeing equal? Or are the darknesses and the light equal?'"

This pair was treated at Fuṣṣilat 41/11 (iʾtiyā ṭawʿan aw karhan), and it was recorded there: that a command offering two options is answered in one direction only (ataynā ṭāʾiʿīn). I rely on that treatment.

The difference here must be recorded:

In Fuṣṣilat the offer had two alternatives; in al-Raʿd the statement covers both sides. I record this as an observation about the language.

وَظِلَٰلُهُم بِٱلْغُدُوِّ وَٱلْـَٔاصَالِ — and the shadows too are named.

The sign of the shadow was treated in detail at al-Furqān 25/45-46 (kayfa madda'ẓ-ẓill) and taken up again at al-Naḥl 16/48 (yatafayyaʾu ẓilāluhu). I rely on that treatment.

I record this as my own reading: among the things that prostrate, shadows are counted — that is, a thing that has no existence of its own, that exists only through the existence of something else. And the movement of a shadow is not in the hands of the person. This is the point of its standing in the list of those that prostrate.

The "they are not equal" series was treated in many places in the index: Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) 40/58, al-Jāthiya 45/21, Fāṭir 35/19-22, al-Sajda 32/18. Al-Raʿd is one link in that chain.

And its place within the sūra must be recorded: this comparison comes immediately before the flood similitude of the seventeenth verse. The question is put, that is, and then answered with a similitude.