Surah Asr of the Quran says: وَالْعَصْر،  إِنَّ الْإِنْسَانَ لَفِي خُسْرٍ . This passes a sweeping remark on the whole of history. (103.1-2) The verse means: History is witness that man is doomed to be in loss. This is a sweeping remark about the whole of history. It means people will live in loss.  They will not be able to achieve what they want. لَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا الْإِنْسَانَ فِي كَبَدٍ(90.4) A human being will not be able to gain what he seeks.

It is strange that the Quran passed such a sweeping remark 1400 years ago. This remark encompasses the history both before and after the revelation of the Quran. The history spanning the period before and after the Quran's revelation tells us that people gained political, did business, took money from banks and gathered everything but couldn’t find happiness. I will explain this with a hadith. A hadith says: افضل العبادة انتظار الفرج (The best form of worship is waiting for a better future).

This hadith tells us that God has assigned two phases for a human being: the pre-death phase and the post-death phase. The pre-death period is a waiting period and the post-death period is a gaining period. If you seek in the waiting period what you are supposed to receive later, then it is the same as wanting a park to run around in an airplane. You will never have a park in an airplane. People seek in the waiting period what they are supposed to get in the gaining period. In other words, we can say that people are wanting to achieve the unachievable. They are trying to achieve in the present world what is unachievable. How will they ever gain the unachievable?