فَلَا صَدَّقَ وَلَا صَلَّىٰ
Falaa saddaqa wa laa sallaa
He neither believed nor prayed,
He neither affirmed the truth nor prayed,
Ṣaddaqa carries two readings commentators have both defended: to affirm as true, and to give, since ṣadaqa, alms, is built from the same letters. The verse accordingly measures a life either by belief and prayer or by charity and prayer, and the reader is not asked to choose. Every verb here is past tense, summing a whole life from the vantage of its final moment.