Surah Al-Takathur

Its purpose is to state what was indicated by the racing horses, that the cause of destruction on the Day of Gathering - which its image is the Calamity - is the gathering of wealth and the settling in the abode of transience. Its name clearly indicates this: 'In the name of Allah, the Lord of Glory and Honor, the Most Gracious, who encompasses with His grace, after the accusation, and brings into existence after non-existence; the Most Merciful, who has specifically granted His loved ones the permanence of their blessings by completion.

* *When it affirmed in the Calamity the matter of the Hour, and divided the people therein into wretched and happy, and concluded with the wretched, it opened this [Surah] with the reason for wretchedness and the principle of gathering, so that the listener may be deterred from this cause to be among the first category. It said what its essence is: You have been divided, and there was a portion of you that is doomed because it has distracted you, meaning it has made you heedless, except for the rare among you, a great heedlessness about death, which alone is sufficient for the resurrection towards asceticism. So how about what comes after it? Al-Takathur, which is boasting and bragging about the abundance of fleeting possessions from the worldly goods: wealth, status, children, and similar things that distract from Allah. This has made it necessary to divert all ambition towards gathering, and that has diverted you towards amusement, so it has made you heedless of what is before you from the Hereafter and the true religion, and from the remembrance of your Lord, and from everything that saves you from His wrath, or from competing in the deeds that lead to the highest ranks through abundant acts of worship. All of this is because you do not submit to what has overwhelmed you from ignorance, the cause of which is the desire of the soul and the love of comfort, so your scales have become light. And this amusement has been removed to emphasize that there is nothing other than it that is regrettable to be distracted from.