بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
أَلْهَىٰكُمُ ٱلتَّكَاثُرُ
YOU ARE OBSESSED by greed for more and more
Asad Translation Note Number :
حَتَّىٰ زُرْتُمُ ٱلْمَقَابِرَ
until you go down to your graves.1
Asad Translation Note Number :
كَلَّا سَوْفَ تَعْلَمُونَ
Nay, in time you will come to understand!
Asad Translation Note Number :
ثُمَّ كَلَّا سَوْفَ تَعْلَمُونَ
And once again:2 Nay, in time you will come to understand!
Asad Translation Note Number :
كَلَّا لَوْ تَعْلَمُونَ عِلْمَ ٱلْيَقِينِ
Nay, if you could but understand [it] with an understanding [born] of certainty,
Asad Translation Note Number :
لَتَرَوُنَّ ٱلْجَحِيمَ
you would indeed, most surely, behold the blazing fire [of hell]!3
Asad Translation Note Number :
ثُمَّ لَتَرَوُنَّهَا عَيْنَ ٱلْيَقِينِ
In the end you will indeed, most surely, behold it with the eye of certainty:4
Asad Translation Note Number :
ثُمَّ لَتُسْـَٔلُنَّ يَوْمَئِذٍ عَنِ ٱلنَّعِيمِ
and on that Day you will most surely be called to account for [what you did with] the boon of life!
Asad Translation Note Number :
The term takathur bears the connotation of "greedily striving for an increase," i.e., in benefits, be they tangible or intangible, real or illusory. In the above context it denotes man's obsessive striving for more and more comforts, more material goods, greater power over his fellow-men or over nature, and unceasing technological progress. A passionate pursuit of such endeavours, to the exclusion of everything else, bars man from all spiritual insight and, hence, from the acceptance of any restrictions and inhibitions based on purely moral values - with the result that not only individuals but whole societies gradually lose all inner stability and, thus, all chance of happiness.
See surah {6}, note [31].
Sc., "in which you find yourselves now" - i.e., the "hell on earth" brought about by a fundamentally wrong mode of life: an allusion to the gradual destruction of man's natural environment, as well as to the frustration, unhappiness and confusion which an overriding, unrestrained pursuit of "economic growth" is bound to bring - and has, indeed, brought in our time - upon a mankind that is about to lose the remnants of all spiritual, religious orientation.
I.e., in the hereafter, through a direct, unequivocal insight into the real nature of one's past doings, and into the inescapability of the suffering which man brings upon himself by a wrong, wasteful use of the boon of life (an-na'im).
