Essentially who is the successful person on earth?

It was only a couple of days ago. I was busy as usual, and as expected of any believer, reading and rereading the Qur’an to discover, not how knowledgeable I was of and about its inner contents and latent meanings, but how ignorant I remain of its wonderful world. Yes. I am always happy to plead my ignorance of the emeralds and treasures that nest in each word and each ayat (sign) in the Last Testament (The Qur’an).

I know that no single exegesis and not one exegete has succeeded in explaining what, for example, the letter ‘Wa’ or the letter ‘Sin’ in the Qur’an means and could mean. Whenever you come to Chapter 36 of this wonderful scripture and you read Yasin, the only choice it offers you is to bask and bounce in the unknowability of its real import and signification.

In other words, despite their best efforts, the Qur’anic exegesis of alAsyuti, Ibn Kathir, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, al-Zamakhashari, and others are incurably far behind the inexhaustible data about and of this world furnished by the Qur’an, especially in relation to the continuities and changes in the contemporary period. Whereas the letters and the semiotics of the Qur’an remain unchanged and unchangeable, we are therefore fated, and perpetually too, to seek new meanings from our realities while being guided by divine ministrations.

Thus, it came to pass that I found myself in Surat Hud, ayat 108 where the Almighty says: “And as for those who are successful, they shall abide in paradise as long as the heavens and the earth endure; unless Your Lord may will otherwise...”. As soon as I read this ayat, my mind became flooded with a series of questions: essentially who are the successful ones? How can I be one of them? How do we determine success here on earth and what parameters has the Qur’an laid down with which extraterrestrial success would be determined?

The above question became urgent for me when I remembered those things usually considered as indices for earthly success in our world today. To be successful, today, as it was many years ago, is to have huge material comforts; and to have large families - children: boys and girls. To be successful is to have huge bank balances; to be an owner of big estates; to be the consort of beautiful women in the city.

Yes. Earthly success is also often determined by status - being the CEO, the manager, the CMD. They are deemed successful those we refer to today as your excellencies, the (dis)honourables, your majesties etc.

Earthly success is also associational in nature. Whereas a man may have less than his friends, he may, however, consider himself successful having friends with big ‘fat pockets’, heads of corporate organisations and leaders in public governance. Our sense of self-worth is often a function of what they are worth; who is she, who is he, who are they! We glorify ourselves in the illusion of our ‘’closeness’’ to people in whose reality we are worth nothing!!!

Taken together as a problem, it is axiomatic that earthly successes, especially those defined by humans using others as parameters, are soapy, greasy and slippery. They are contingent, not immanent; just like sexual gratification, they depend on their realization, the presence or intervention of the other who could be a compassionate benefactor or a querulous iniquitor.

Earthly successes are also transient. They are fated to the incertitudes and vicissitudes of time. What you consider a factor of success today could be a factor for failure tomorrow. Status and stations of life that often give false notions of terrestrial successes are usually ephemeral and transient.

Then I remembered my village. I remembered our fathers and their fathers, who considered themselves successful each time they contemplated how large their families were. I realized that they were no longer there in our homestead. The last time I went there, the question that crept into my mind was - “where are we?”

Many decades ago, we were over 30 children living together, and happily too, in that compound. But today, we are no more there! Our big compound has become a mansion for lizards; they have become boulevards for ants and termites! We have left our past behind us. Or rather, the past has left us for the future! Or rather, the Owner of the past and the present has caused that familiar and inimitable change such that what constituted success in the past no longer finds any bearing and meaning in the present!

Where then lies permanent success? It lies, unequivocally, in holding firmly to the fundamentals of our faith in line with Quran 23: 1-10. It lies in being Muslim when being the other is the easiest option available to you! Eternal success is guaranteed only to those who come to their Lord on the day of resurrection and their hearts are pure and free of iniquities (Qur’an 26: 89).