Does Competition Need Enmity?

At the finish line

This is an imagined scene: two friends leave a tennis court after a close match. One carries the joy of victory; the other, the exhaustion of trying and the bitterness of the final point. The winner extends his hand. His friend shakes it and says, “Your last shot was excellent.” Losing did not become enjoyable, and the man did not pretend he had no desire to win. But he kept enough distance between the result and the friendship for two human beings. On the way home he asks himself: why can I respect my opponent here, yet find it harder when a colleague gets an opportunity I wanted?

Competition is not a single experience. Some contests are games we choose to enter; others are struggles for a livelihood, a place or recognition. Losing can truly hurt, especially when alternatives are scarce. A sermon demanding a ready smile from the loser is therefore unhelpful. What deserves examination is what we add to the loss: does another person’s advancement require us to belittle them? Does our ambition need an enemy to stay alive?

This is a reflection on the ethics of competition, not an empirical study claiming that competition benefits or harms everyone equally. We will distinguish a limited result, a person’s worth, and the rules that make seeking victory worthy of respect.

Questions to open reflection

Do I want to reach a better standard, or do I want the other person to stop progressing? What remains shared when the prize has room for only one? Does acknowledging a competitor’s skill weaken my determination? How can I defend my rights without making hostility a way of life?

1. An opponent in the round, not an enemy in life

In a clearly defined match, two aims conflict within known boundaries: each player wants to win. But both also need the same court, the same rules, and confidence that points were counted fairly. This common ground is not incidental to competition; it gives the result meaning. Victory achieved by obstructing an opponent or secretly changing the rules is not equivalent to the excellence the match was meant to measure.

We can draw a distinction from this example, not a universal prescription for life. A competitor is someone whose interests clash with ours in a particular matter. An enemy, in our perception, may become someone whose very existence seems threatening. At that point the conflict expands: the aim is no longer to produce better work, but for their work to be worse and for them to lose people’s respect, even in matters unrelated to the opportunity at stake.

A simple question reveals the distance between these states: if I got what I wanted, would I still need them to fail? The answer may reveal that the matter has exceeded its original aim. This does not diagnose the person feeling it; it invites examination of the goal. We can be hurt by someone’s superiority and still choose not to harm them. Ethics does not always begin with pure feelings. Sometimes it begins with a limit on what our feelings permit us to do.

This boundary gives us practical language: I want to win, but will not buy victory by lying about a competitor or sabotaging their opportunity outside the rules. I need not claim to love them to honour their rights.

2. Do I want their advantage, or its disappearance?

In Book Two of Rhetoric, Aristotle distinguishes envy from emulation: the good we see in others may prompt us to seek something similar, or to want them deprived of it. We read this as a historical philosophical distinction, not a laboratory finding or a final judgement on human nature. Its value here lies in asking which direction we choose after making a comparison.

When a nearby shop succeeds, a competing shopkeeper can examine the quality of their own product, service and hours. Alternatively, they can become absorbed in a rumour whose truth they do not know. This example does not prove that every success is deserved or markets are always fair. It distinguishes improving an offering from damaging someone’s reputation. Even a legitimate complaint about a violation requires a fact and evidence, rather than turning every success into an accusation.

The most honest step may be discovering that we do not want the same goal. Perhaps we envy someone’s visibility more than we want the work behind it. Asking what time and sacrifices their advantage requires helps us choose our own path more clearly. We need not compete in every field or turn every talent we encounter into an unfinished task in our own life.

Acknowledging a competitor’s skill describes the problem more accurately: they are currently better than me in a particular respect. That statement leaves room to learn. “They deserve nothing” erases information we need to improve and leaves us with a comforting story that may be untrue.

3. Not every gain in life is a single seat

Some opportunities truly are limited: one person may win a job or championship. Telling someone who lost that their loss is merely an illusion is unfair. But a limited seat does not mean knowledge, dignity or the entire future is limited in the same way. Within a single competition, someone may lose a ranking and gain a skill, or win the ranking and still need to learn.

This distinction does not replace lost income or cancel grief. It prevents the result from expanding into a judgement on life. A rejected applicant has the right to review their assessment, request an explanation and seek another opportunity. They need not immediately call rejection a blessing. What matters is not giving one institution authority to define their entire worth.

In some fields, competitors can cooperate on safe practice and share general knowledge, then compete on the quality of their offerings. People may disagree about appropriate limits to cooperation in different fields. We do not turn this idea into permission for agreements that harm beneficiaries or bar others from entry. The ethical criterion is whether cooperation improves the shared environment or closes it for its participants’ benefit.

The word “cooperation” does not make every agreement good, just as “competition” does not make every rivalry bad. The question concerns the action itself, who benefits and who is harmed, not the name we give the relationship.

4. Rules come before advice about sportsmanship

It is easy to demand fair competition in an environment that rewards defamation or hides its selection criteria. Such advice is incomplete. If an organisation wants useful competition, it should clarify what it measures, refrain from changing the criterion after results emerge, and offer a reasonable route for objections. These are organisational principles proposed on ethical grounds, not a claim that applying them removes every dispute.

Nor does someone with training, time and support begin in the same position as someone without them. Acknowledging this does not deny a winner’s effort, but limits their arrogance and opens the question of fairer opportunities. A person’s superiority can be real while the conditions for reaching the competition are unequal. We need to keep both ideas in view.

At the individual level, rules set limits on means: I do not claim another’s work, withhold information that should be available to everyone, or despise those who leave the competition. I can also refuse a contest that requires crossing these boundaries. Withdrawal calls for weighing its consequences, but remains a possible ethical choice, not a defeat by definition.

Winning is itself a test: what do I do when my voice becomes louder? Mocking the loser may seem a natural extension of joy, but it adds a punishment that was never part of the round. Confidence in an achievement can say “Well done” without needing to say “You are nothing.”

In the light of the Quran and Islamic wisdom

The verse occurs in the context of the bliss of the righteous, not in glorification of worldly victory for its own sake. Al-Saadi explains competition here as hastening towards deeds leading to that bliss. We should therefore not make it a slogan endorsing every race for money or fame. The reflection we draw concerns direction: where do we exhaust our energies, and towards what good does getting ahead lead us?

A hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari identifies spending wealth rightly and acting on and teaching wisdom as objects of worthy emulation, rather than merely possessing something that attracts attention. Al-Bukhari included it in the chapter on aspiring to knowledge and wisdom. The intended meaning here is seeking similar good, not wishing its owner to lose it.

The context of the cooperation verse in Al-Ma’idah also forbids allowing hatred of a people to lead to aggression. Al-Saadi stresses remaining just even when harmed. For our subject, we draw the lesson that intense competition, and even genuine wrongdoing against us, grants no licence to lie or betray. This is a reflective application of the principle, not a claim that the text was revealed about contemporary competitions.

A serious objection: do these ethics make us weak?

A reader may object: the other party respects no boundaries; this opportunity is no game; I might lose my livelihood by treating them gently. The objection matters because it confronts ethics with a real cost. Yet the choice is not confined to unchecked aggression or unprotected surrender. We can gather evidence, document an agreement, seek independent review, refuse dealings, and claim our rights through appropriate channels without inventing facts or humiliating people.

Respecting a competitor does not require revealing business secrets or giving them an undeserved opportunity. Legitimate protection is part of responsibility. What concerns us is turning defence into open-ended revenge no longer connected with repairing harm. Our goal may then become making the other person suffer even if we recover nothing we lost.

Anger may awaken energy for confrontation, but energy alone does not establish that its direction is good. We should ask: does this action bring a solution closer? Can its accuracy and fairness be defended before an impartial party? Would we accept the same standard used against us? These questions do not guarantee victory, but make us responsible for the means when we cannot control the outcome.

Applications: competing without consuming one another

Before entering a competition, write down the precise goal you want, then two means you refuse to use even if they would help you win. This is a proposed practical commitment, not a psychological test. Its value is that boundaries are clearer when set before the moment grows heated.

During competition, separate your performance notebook from your comparison notebook. In the first, record what you can improve: training, preparation or clarity of presentation. In the second, record what you actually know about the competitor, leaving room for what you do not know. Remove guesses about intentions from your account; they do not become facts merely because they fit your disappointment.

After the result, allow yourself grief without rushing to announce acceptance. Then ask what can be reviewed using evidence and what should be accepted as the result of this round. If you congratulate the winner, you need neither a long speech nor denial of your loss. One sincere sentence about something they did well is enough.

If you win, give credit to those who helped, and refrain from explaining others’ losses through defects in their character. You may not know their circumstances, and positions may change. Keep a relationship or activity outside competition that is not measured by rank, so your entire existence does not hang on a scoreboard.

Closing: a victory worth respecting

Competition does not need someone to hate in order to have meaning. It needs a worthy goal, real effort and boundaries protecting participants. We may lose despite respecting them, and someone who treated us unfairly may win. We therefore do not present ethics as a guaranteed trick for victory. It is a choice about how we strive and the effects we leave, even when we do not receive the prize.

In the opening scene, the handshake diminished neither the loser’s pain nor the winner’s achievement. But it kept the next round’s door open and kept the friend larger than the point he won. Perhaps maturity means seriously seeking excellence while remembering that a competitor is not an obstacle life designed for us, but a human being striving as we do.

Questions that stay with us

In what area have I turned competition into a judgement on my entire worth? Which skill in a competitor can I acknowledge and learn from? What boundary will I not cross in seeking victory? How do I demand fair rules without justifying breaking them myself?