Al-Mutaffifin · Makki · ayah 26 of 36

Al-Mutaffifin 83:26

خِتَـٰمُهُۥ مِسْكٌ ۚ وَفِى ذَٰلِكَ فَلْيَتَنَافَسِ ٱلْمُتَنَـٰفِسُونَ

“The last of it[1884] is musk. So for this let the competitors compete.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The surah that began with people scrambling for grams ends by giving the competitive heart something worth racing for.

A reflection

Rivalry that lifts

Tanāfus is competition, and the ayah does not condemn it. It commands it: for this, let the competitors compete.

The surah opened with a grim kind of rivalry. Traders raced one another for a few extra grams, each shaking the scoop and pressing the grain. That competition made everyone poorer. Now the same instinct is pointed somewhere else.

A classical scholar of the heart draws the line sharply. Munāfasa, he says, is hurrying towards an excellence you see in someone else, trying to reach it or pass it. It comes from nobility of spirit. Envy is the opposite. It wishes the other would lose what he has, so that both are equally empty. The competitor wants to rise. The envious man wants others to fall.

The Companions, he notes, competed in good and were glad when others joined them. ʿUmar used to race Abū Bakr in good deeds and never managed to beat him. He said he never raced him to any good without finding that Abū Bakr had got there first. The Prophet ﷺ even called this kind of rivalry a permitted envy. 'There is no envy except in two cases.' One is a person given wealth who spends it rightly. The other is a person given wisdom who judges by it and teaches it (Sahih al-Bukhari).

Picture two club runners on the last mile of a race. One is faster, but she stays at her club-mate's shoulder, pushing the pace and talking her through the final hill. Both finish with personal bests. They competed, and neither lost.

That is the strategy the ayah offers a competitive heart. Do not suppress the drive. Point it at what lasts, and let it lift the people racing beside you.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.