More than once he recited Surat at-takāthur to me with great feeling: “alhākumu-t-takāthur hatta zurtum al-maqābir…..” These verses, he would say, condemn the unending consumerism and greed in which humans (especially in our time) are entrapped: The verses that refer to ‘ilm al-yaqīn and that speak of latarawunna al-jahīm, alerts us to the hell in which we actually live in this world, not merely to punishment in the life to come. My father read these verses as arguing that if we could see this truth with clarity we would realize the hellish aspect of our collective life, the damage we do to ourselves and to others. This was a central moral concern for him, and it points to where an Islamic politics might begin: Muslims are expected to believe that greed as a collective way of life (the insatiable desire for more) and exhibitionism as an individual style (in which theatrical presentations of the self and consumer choices are confused with moral autonomy) have together seduced people away from what he called “God-consciousness” – and therefore from an awareness of the objective consequences of the way we live (militarization of societies, growing disparity between rich and poor, unceasing destruction of the natural environment, accumulating climatic and nuclear disasters).
Talal Asad, "Muhammad Asad between Religion and Politics," p. 163.
