Al-Muminun ('The Believers'), 118 Meccan verses, opens by naming the traits of the faithful who will prosper, humility in prayer, charity, chastity, keeping trusts, and describes the stages of human formation from a drop to a formed creation (23:12-14). It closes warning against squandering the respite of this life.
Al-Muminun's opening list of the believers' qualities, humility in prayer, avoidance of vain talk, payment of charity, chastity and guarding of trusts (23:1-9), is read by commentators including al-Qurtubi as a practical checklist distinct from purely doctrinal statements of faith found elsewhere in the Quran, describing conduct rather than belief as the test of genuine faith. The surah's account of human formation, from a drop of fluid to a clinging clot, to a lump, to bones clothed with flesh, 'then We produced him as another creation' (23:12-14), became a frequently cited passage in later Islamic writing on embryology, read by many modern commentators as broadly consonant with observed stages of development while classical exegetes read it primarily as evidence of God's creative power rather than a scientific description in its own right. The surah closes by warning that those who ask to be returned to life after death for a second chance will be refused (23:99-100), a passage commentators read as foreclosing any doctrine of repeated worldly return after death.