Verbal aspect carries meaning
Hypothesis examined: in the Qur'an the finite verb would express an act, the participle a state, and the perfect always the past; the translation should therefore render every perfect by a past tense.
Part of the intuition is sound, and corrections came out of it: in 102:1-2, « أَلْهَىٰكُمُ ٱلتَّكَاثُرُ حَتَّىٰ زُرْتُمُ ٱلْمَقَابِرَ » is now rendered in the past, "Rivalry in accumulation has distracted you, until you visited the graves"; in 104:3, « مَالَهُۥٓ أَخْلَدَهُۥ », "his goods have made him eternal".
But the general statement, "perfect = past", is false in the corpus. After إِذَا, the perfect announces what will happen: « إِذَا ٱلشَّمْسُ كُوِّرَتْ », "When the sun is wrapped up" (81:1); « إِذَا ٱلسَّمَآءُ ٱنفَطَرَتْ », "When the sky breaks apart" (82:1). These series describe the end of the world, which has not yet happened; translating them in the past would be a misreading. Arabic uses the perfect here to say the event is certain, not that it is past.
The cases where aspect is demonstrated to carry meaning are fixed separately: “"Has glorified" and "glorifies": the aspect of the openings in سبّح” (سبّح "has glorified" against يسبّح "glorifies") and the learning “Where the aspect of the verb makes the meaning”.
In the text
أَلْهَىٰكُمُ ٱلتَّكَاثُرُ حَتَّىٰ زُرْتُمُ ٱلْمَقَابِرَإِذَا ٱلشَّمْسُ كُوِّرَتْإِذَا ٱلسَّمَآءُ ٱنفَطَرَتْ