Gems from the Holy Qur’an
From the translation by Muhammad Asad (Leopold Weiss)
About the translator:
Muhammad Asad, Leopold Weiss, was born of Jewish parents in Livow, Austria (later Poland) in 1900, and at the age of 22 made his first visit to the Middle East. He later became an outstanding foreign correspondent for the Franfurter Zeitung, and after years of devoted study became one of the leading Muslim scholars of our age. His translation of the Holy Qur'an is one of the most lucid and well-referenced works in this category, dedicated to “li-qawmin yatafakkaroon” (people who think). Forwarded by Dr Ismat Kamal.
Chapter 102, At-Takaathur (Greed for More and More), Verses 1-8 (Complete Surah)
[ 1 ] You are obsessed by greed for more and more and more until you go down to your graves.
Nay, in time you will come to understand!
And once again: Nay, in time you will come to understand!
Nay, if you could but understand [it] with an understanding [born] of certainty, you would indeed, most surely, behold the blazing fire [of hell]! [ 2 ]
In the end you will indeed, most surely, behold it with the eye of certainty: [ 3 ]
And on that Day you will most surely be called to account for [what you did with] the boon of life!
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Translator’s Notes
[ 1 ] The term “takaathur” 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 technical progress. A passionate pursuit of such endeavors, 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.
[ 2 ] 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 mankind that is about to lose the remnants of all spiritual, religious orientation.
[ 3 ] 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.
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Note:
In one of his books, Muhammad Asad has described how, while he was travelling in a Berlin underground train in the 1920s, reflection upon this Surah convinced him of the truth of the message of the Qur’an. All around him, the faces of the evening commuters showed signs of deep stress. He saw that the Qur’an was referring to this stress, arising from the rat-race and the desire to keeping up with the Joneses, which is a phenomenon of modern times - unknown in the Arabian society of more than thirteen hundred years ago. These verses convinced him that the Qur’an’s message from God is for all people and for all times.
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