Surah 102. Al-Takathur

YOU ARE OBSESSED by greed for more and more

until you go down to your graves.¹

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.

Nay, in time you will come to understand!

And once again:² Nay, in time you will come to understand!

See surah {6}, note [31].

Nay, if you could but understand [it] with an understanding [born] of certainty,

you would indeed, most surely, behold the blazing fire [of hell]!³

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.

In the end you will indeed, most surely, behold it with the eye of certainty:⁴

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).

and on that Day you will most surely be called to account for [what you did with] the boon of life!