Sayyidna Ibn ` Abbas ؓ has stated that Salah from Allah is blessing, from angels it is prayer for forgiveness and from humans it is supplication. The word Salah carries all the three meanings.

تَحِيَّتُهُمْ يَوْمَ يَلْقَوْنَهُ سَلَامٌ (Their greeting, the Day they will meet Him, will be, "Salam" - 33:44). This is the explanation of the Salah that is sent to believers from-Allah. It means that the day they would meet Allah, they will be respectfully addressed by Him with the word, 'Salami i.e. (Assalamu ` alaykum) . The day of meeting Allah according to Imam Raghib, would be the Doomsday; some other leading exegetes say that it would be when they enter Paradise and they would receive Salam from Allah Ta’ ala as well as from the angels; and yet other scholars consider it to be the day of death when they would leave the whole world to be present before Allah as stated by Sayyidna ` Abdullah Ibn Masud ؓ that when the Angel of Death goes to a believer to extract the spirit of life out of him, he gives him a message that his Lord has sent to him Salam. The word 'meeting' is true in all the three cases. Therefore there can be no objection or contradiction in the traditions, because Salam from Allah Ta’ ala is sent on all the three occasions.

Note

This verse has proved that when Muslims meet each other, their greeting should be assalamu ` alaykum whether from the older to the younger or from the younger to the older.