Al-Waqia describes the Quran as held in 'a well-guarded record, not touched except by the purified' (56:78-79), a verse classical Islamic jurisprudence developed into a specific ritual rule: the majority position across the legal schools holds that a person must be in a state of ritual purity, having performed wudu, before physically touching a copy of the Quran's Arabic text, though jurists differ on details, including whether the rule covers translations, electronic text, or only the Arabic Mushaf itself, and a minority of scholars read the verse as describing angels in the unseen realm rather than legislating a rule for human handling of the physical text at all.
The verse sits within a longer oath sworn by 'the setting of the stars,' which the surah calls, if properly understood, a mighty oath (56:75-76), read by classical commentators as pointing to the same fading of starlight before dawn used elsewhere in the Quran as a sign of the night's end, before pivoting from that natural sign to the claim about the Quran's own protected, exalted status, a rhetorical movement from an ordinary nightly phenomenon to the extraordinary claim it is offered to support. Editions and apps presenting the Quran electronically have generated fresh discussion among contemporary jurists over whether this same purity requirement extends to a phone or tablet screen displaying the text.