BEYOND EXCUSES

O n 14 September 2025, I brought home a flagship smartphone. It is among the company’s finest creations— sleek, powerful, almost audacious in its ambition. The lenses are extraordinarily sharp, the memory generous, the processing effortless. Even the cooling chambers feel as if they have been engineered with a watchmaker’s care, keeping the device composed while it rushes through a thousand tasks. Calls sound clean; every feature feels thoughtfully refined. A piece of glass and metal, yet strangely alive with intelligence. Sitting with this new device in my hand, I found myself thinking about the story of the mobile phone itself—how, in so short a time, it has travelled from smart to smarter, and still presses forward. Then another thought rose: this principle of “evermore” is not limited to phones. It runs like a current through human history, from the needle to nuclear power, from simple tools to spacefaring technology. In every field, we push, we refine, we add. Humanity pays a price for each improvement—time, money, effort, discipline—and then enjoys the fruit. The rule seems constant: the higher the price, the more elevated the result; the more earnest the striving, the finer the refinement. As I turned these ideas over, verses of the Quran returned to me with a fresh gleam: “And there is even more with Us.” (50: 35) It is as if God is reminding us that the story of addition does not end in this world. If the pattern of life on earth is “smart” to “smarter”, then the pattern of the next life is “finite” to “limitless”. There is another world—Jannat al-Naim, Jannat al-Khuld, Jannat al-Aliyah—where additions do not taper off, BEYOND THE LATEST MODEL From Premium Features To The Soul’s True Upgrade Let us not be shy of the law that governs both technology and eternity: to receive what is higher, become what is higher. The hand that upgrades phones can also upgrade the self—one intention at a time, one prayer at a time, one act of mercy at a time.