Surah At-Takathur [Quran 102] | Mufti Abu Layth

we've all of us have read suratu takata so often okay the surah about sometimes they they translate it as competing or as rival rivaling someone but really i see it more as amassing kind of amassing stuff whatever that stuff is going to be the stuff of this dunya the stuff of whatever people say you know amassing goods or amassing wealth or amassing

it's so uh powerful that the quran doesn't restrict it allah you go straight to surah straight to the first verse okay now there's only eight verses to this short surah that this amassing this has distracted you

now what does this is many ways to understand this it could be speaking about wealth of the dunya it could be speaking about um actual properties it could be speaking about things like um evil actions being immersed in that but it could also be speaking about the illusion of quantity

you see there is a distinction between happiness or there's there is an illusion of happiness being found in quantity allah says you see it is a mistake people to assume that people or those people who are genuinely happy

that they have the most of everything they don't it's just that they make the most of everything they have it's the qualitative the qualitative absorption and utility and enjoyment of what they have over the quantity but it's so easy because look in this

dunya so many things are a numbers game it's true isn't it it's a numbers game people often say security lies in numbers even to that extent our sense of identity is tied into numbers we want to be part of a bigger group the identities you know this is uh henry touch file who has so much i mean he has groundbreaking research on the minimal group paradigm that within the individual you see people had

studied the individual in the group but there is a group within the individual that we it could be arbitrary what you give us but if we are split over anything and in his experiments we they would randomly allocate people to groups just the mere fact of being in a group was enough to identify with the in-group and favor them against and be biased and prejudiced against the out group even if it was absolutely arbitrary

we find safety in our even in in questioning our thoughts oh just follow the crowd it's safer i'd rather be with what is the the poet had said i am just one of my tribe if they're astray i'm astray

allah says that that that you will not be guided so at the perspective of beliefs ideas goods assets happiness

it was the quality sometimes you'll get people and this can affect everybody you know this may affect us when you may identify with this i may identify with it or we may know someone you'll see people who they have wonderful ideas in life so talented

bright have energy but then they get so many oh you know what i should do this uh i should i i've got a friend i won't name him i don't wanna want he's so uh you know why i want i wanna do this i want i'm gonna go to university i'm gonna follow this degree i'm gonna oh i've got this idea i'm gonna start up this business you know i'm gonna do this i'm gonna oh you know what it is i want to get into software i want to design software i want oh wow you know that that's a trade i should be in i should be in this trade i should do ah next week you speak to me you know oh

oh my god you know i'm thinking more and more about i should actually become a crypto trader i should al you see if you spread yourself so thin the real goals in life the things that real happiness and quality is made of that stuff you miss it maybe you catch a bit of it but

until you reach the grave allah see but in a way insane is like that he's so distracted it's so easy because this world within us in the hearts and minds it is so vast it's so easy to become distracted we're all guilty of it this is where we we align we gather our focus again

see because either way you certainly and i certainly and we all certainly will come to know that yeah in the end what did we spend all that time on you know trying this and that and this and that and i'm not dissing i'm not saying don't if you can pull off multiple ventures pull them off you see what i'm speaking about is the illusion

of quantity as a concept that with certainty you will come to know if only you knew

with certainty now this one understanding of this is the afterlife damnation that you will see damnation and i believe by extension we can also understand it to me and this is from the the kind of miraculous nature of the quran it gives us so many understandings when we look at it that even in this world

what happens afterwards that's afterwards even in this dunya letter and where does this damnation where does this hell begin begins within us see and we spoke about that previously

we'd spoken about that in a previous that one way of understanding is that in this dunya they are in these blessings they are in a an internal paradise allah says and you'll certainly see this see ruin i feel one of the greatest tragedies of of a human life is

its failing in realizing him or herself to have not realized actually like self-actualized that's what i mean by real life not a realization but a realization to have not self-actualized by the time we reach the end of this journey

and then at that stage you see it with certainty what have i done in this life and at that point what does a person do is see when a person realizes that i've done then they are asked

one understanding is the architect of course but even here this is the meaning this is also an incredible meaning that you can see that even here at that stage a person who's asking they themselves are realizing what about all those blessings i did have damn you know

that i cannot bring back those things that have gone not by saying if only or i should have i could have i would have these things it's too late and i think this surah is such a beautiful and empowering reminder so brief eight ayat begins straight smacks you al-hakum

notice allah is not saying that takata is evil amassing things is evil allah is not saying that this is jahannam or this is haram or this allah is not saying that it's much greater than that you missed the point it distracted you

what a powerful surah al haq and then you will be asked

what about the countless blessings but these powerful reminders what they do is they also it's like a wake up it's like you've washed your face and you freshened up it's like a caffeine kick to say let's start again