quranreadalong

[quranreadalong]

#198, Surah 40

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 198

We’ll finish this up today, meaning we didn’t make it to #200 in this surah after all. That’ll be in surah 41, then. O well, the next surah is more of this same disbelievers-are-doomed shit, so it doesn’t rly matter tbh!

40:61 is our starting point. Allah made the night so people could sleep, and also made everything in general, so everyone should worship him and believe Mohammed’s revelations. Those who do not are delusional liars. (Bad!)

Allah also made the earth a dwelling-place for humans, made the sky a ceiling for the earth (hmm), and created humans themselves. Therefore, everyone should worship him. Yes, that’s exactly what he just said three lines ago. Lo! Allah loveth repeating himself.

Again Mohammed is commanded to proclaim that Allah is the only god and he is a prophet. We get a repeat of the whole human-creation-cycle that we’ve seen multiple times now: the first human was created from dust/clay, then Adam’s children were created from a drop of semen and became “clots” in the womb of Eve, then they were born, grew into adults, and began to decline in old age. Allah is in control of all of that. Fair enough, neutral.

Back to bitching about those who disbelieve in Mohammed’s revelations, though. 40:70 begins a long kuffar hell counter (1) hit:

Those who deny the Scripture and that wherewith We send Our messengers. But they will come to know, When carcans are about their necks and chains. They are dragged Through boiling waters; then they are thrust into the Fire.

Ahh yes, the disbelievers-in-chains imagery. A bit stale at this point, really. As is the description of the scene where Allah taunts the disbelievers and asks them where their fake gods are, the statement that Allah is the one who sends disbelievers astray, and another ayah about how disbelievers are insolent and hellbound. Just gets a tad boring after seeing it so many times, I’m afraid. Still bad, though.

Aight, we’re finally at the end of the surah. Let’s see if Mo can pull it together and give us something worthwhile here. Hm... everyone will be brought before Allah after they die. Eh. Allah’s punishment will come upon the liars eventually. Questionable and basically a threat, but still eh. Allah gave various animals to humanity for food and transport purposes, and shows humans “tokens” of his grandeur. Zzz.

Well, this is the end of the surah. Let’s see what we got. It’s... another “travel the land and see the consequences!!” for denying prophets (meaning doom unto disbelievers) ayah. Joy! We’re done here.

The Quran Read-Along: Day 198

Ayat: 25

Good: 0

Neutral: 13 (40:61-62, 40:64-69, 40:77-81)

Bad: 12 (40:63, 40:70-76, 40:82-85)

Kuffar hell counter: 1 (40:69-76)

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SLIGHT PROBLEM: NO ONE KNOWS HOW THE ISLAMIC AFTERLIFE WORKS

So. Last time we read this, in reference to the evil pharaoh of the Exodus story.

Allah warded off from [Moses] the evils which they plotted, while a dreadful doom encompassed Pharaoh's folk, The Fire; they are exposed to it morning and evening; and on the day when the Hour upriseth (it is said): Cause Pharaoh's folk to enter the most awful doom.

The pharaoh and his underlings are currently being tortured, before the Day of Judgement, at which time they will... be tortured even more.

This is our first taste of the poorly-attested, barely-understood, but nonetheless mostly agreed-upon concept of adhab al-qabr, literally the “torment of the grave”. This is not a concept that is mentioned in the Quran, beyond the ayah above, but it is found in several ahadith.

You see, Islam has the same problem as Christianity with regards to the whole afterlife thing--the Day of Judgement is meant to sort people into heaven and hellbound categories, but there are stories within both religions indicating that people are punished or rewarded long before this day. Maybe early Muslims didn’t care much about this topic because they believed that the Day of Judgement was approaching fast. Mohammed enjoyed scaring his followers by indicating that the day was getting close, as we’ve seen in the Quran itself. But, uh, that didn’t happen. And so here we are around 1400 years later, and the question of what happens to people’s souls between their deaths and their resurrection at the end of the world has become increasingly pertinent.

Islamic tradition largely holds that this period takes place in a metaphysical realm, time, or just a condition called barzakh, meaning “barrier” (between life and the “actual” afterlife). The word comes from this line in surah 23:

behind them is a barrier until the day when they are raised

Now, tbh, this just says the barrier is behind them, meaning the dead can’t come back to life (Unless Allah Willeth, etc). As we’ve seen multiple times now, Mohammed said that on the Day of Judgement, the disbelievers will beg Allah for a second chance at life and he’ll tell them to fuck off into hell. It’s usually implied that this is their first conscious experience after death. In fact, throughout the Quran, we’re made to believe that people won’t even notice that any time has passed between their deaths and resurrection. The doomed disbelievers who are raised on the Day of Judgement say they were “sleeping” while in their graves, which is odd if they spent the entirety of their time there being tortured, either physically or spiritually (no one knows if the torture is meant to be inflicted upon their bodies or just their souls).

Regardless, the reason why barzakh is a thing is because both the Quran and the ahadith refer to people enduring torment before the end of the world, and scholars needed to come up with some sort of theological explanation for this. Barzakh was the nearest equivalent, so they went with that (though what “barzakh” actually meant varied within the first two centuries of Islam).

In the barzakh realm/time/whatever after death, people will be subjected to two fates: punishment and reward, similar to the Christian theological idea of “particular judgement” preceding the final judgement (which was also debated among different sects of Christians, with some saying that the dead were just unconscious until they were resurrected). The punishment is for wrongdoers, and is the adhab al-qabr in question. A hadith assures us that this is a real thing, and perhaps tells us where Mohammed got the concept from.

There came to me two old women from the old Jewesses of Medina [who] said: The people of the grave are tormented ... He (the Prophet) said: They told the truth; they would be tormented (so much) that the animals would listen to it. She ('A'isha) said: Never did I see him (the Holy Prophet) afterwards but seeking refuge from the torment of the grave in prayer.

The torment of the grave is clearly distinguished from the torment of hell in other very reputable ahadith--so there is a definite basis for the concept, despite its absence from the Quran itself. A variety of other ahadith flesh out the concept. First of all, that line about animals hearing it was apparently meant to be taken literally:

The Messenger of Allah went out after the sun had set, and heard a sound. He said '(It is) Jews being tormented in their graves.’

As for the disbeliever or the hypocrite, it is said to him (in his grave): 'What did you say about this man (Mohammed)?' He says: 'I do not know; I used to say what the people said (ie, he is an idiot moron).' It is said to him (by the angels): 'You did not understand and you did not follow those who had understanding.' Then he is dealt a blow between his ears and the man utters a scream which everything near him hears, except for the two races (humans and jinn).''

Even dead Jews bothered Mohammed. Christ.

Secondly, the “sins” that cause you to be tormented range in severity from disbelief all the way down to............. uh...

The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) happened to pass by two graves and said: They (their occupants) are being tormented, but they are not tormented for a grievous sin. One of them [gossiped] and the other did not keep himself safe from being defiled by urine. He then called for a fresh twig and split it into two parts, and planted them on each grave and then said: Perhaps, their punishment way be mitigated as long as these twigs remain fresh.

...not changing your nasty-ass urine-stained clothes. Nice of Mohammed to have pity on that guy, though. This indicates that some of the torment of the grave can be lessened by the actions of the living, though why putting an object on someone’s grave accomplishes this is A Mystery Of Allah.

Whether Muslims will be subjected to any of this torture is unclear. A hadith suggests they will not.

“Allah will keep firm those who believe, with the word that stands firm.” [14:27] This has been revealed concerning the torment of the grave. It will be said to him: ‘Who is your Lord?’ He will say: ‘My Lord is Allah, and my Prophet is Muhammad.’

(It’s said in less-reputable stories that angels named Munkar and Nakir are responsible for asking these questions, sometimes with a third angel named Ruman thrown in. They are generally depicted as very scary looking in order to frighten people.)

As for those Muslims who get to experience their pre-Day-of-Judgement rewards, it’s... also unclear what happens to them. Islamic scholars sometimes point to this verse from back in the third surah, following the Battle of Uhud, as a reference to barzakh:

And never think of those who have been killed in the cause of Allah as dead. Rather, they are alive with their Lord, receiving provision, Rejoicing in what Allah has bestowed upon them of His bounty, and they receive good tidings about those [to be martyred] after them who have not yet joined them - that there will be no fear concerning them, nor will they grieve.

And in a hadith, it’s said that these dead soldiers are turned into green birds who live in jannah... presumably temporarily, so they can enjoy their lady-lovin’ rewards later. But both the hadith and the Quran make it clear that Muslims who die while waging jihad (in addition to prophets etc) are given express tickets to heaven itself... they’re not in some in-between state. So this can’t be barzakh or the good equivalent of the torment of the grave. I mean, it can, if you want to connect the two badly enough, but it doesn’t make much sense.

So some Islamic scholars proposed more modest rewards. After satisfactorily answering the angels’ questions, they say, dead Muslims in their graves will get a sneak peek into jannah, filling them with hope and tiding them over until the Day of Judgement. The grave itself will be made spacious and well-lit for them, then they can sleep peacefully. (“Wow this is rly helpful!!!” - guy who has been dead for 800 years and is now a femur bone and some ashes.)

The sneak peek hadith linked above basically states that people will know whether they’re going to hell or heaven right after answering the questions, though, so why does the Quran show the disbelievers being shocked when they’re sentenced to hell? What’s even the point of the Day of Judgement when they’ve already received judgement? Why bother with the bridge thing and all the dramatics? Lo! It is a mystery. Then again, Allah judges everyone before they’re even born, so I guess it makes just as much sense as everything else in this religion, which is to say none at all.

At the end of the day, what we really have here is a disconnect between the Quran itself and the ahadith, which does happen every now and then. Nothing in the Quran beyond this one line clearly says that dead people will be doing or experiencing anything other than... being dead, with the exception of those granted Instant Jannah. But the ahadith make it abundantly clear that this is not the case. The ahadith referencing this are very strong and can’t be dismissed as later fabrications.

As for why this disconnect may have arisen in the first place, the hadith from Aisha perhaps suggests that Mohammed made adhab al-qabr a more central part of Islam only after he heard Jews in Medina talking about it a lot. Perhaps he himself didn’t fully understand how all of this was meant to work, since neither Jews nor Christians offered a solid, unified explanation for it, and he didn’t want to incorporate it into the Quran beyond this line. Or maybe he just needed to give his followers some extra motivation to keep following him--now they weren’t just risking torment in hell, but also torment before hell. I don’t know.

What I do know is that the concept of the torment of the grave, and a consciousness-after-death concept more broadly (even if only for a moment), has become an accepted part of Islam over the centuries despite its near-total absence from the Quran. Not everyone can agree on the exact nature of it all, since there really isn’t much material to base it upon, but most do agree that it is a thing. Somehow.

Anyway the real answer to this and many other theological mysteries is that Mohammed didn’t think all of this through clearly enough and so Islamic scholars had to try to fix his mistakes for several centuries. O well!

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#197, Surah 40

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 197

The pharaoh has tried and failed to build The Stairway To Heaven and now his maybe-cousin has more hot takes to share. We rejoin our heroes in 40:38.

Maybe-cousin tells people to listen to him, because he will tell them how to behave properly. This life, he tells them, is only a temporary “enjoyment”--the afterlife is what will go on forever. Therefore, they should focus on getting to jannah.

That prompts a good ayah of the good-Muslims-go-to-heaven variety:

whoso doeth right, whether male or female, and is a believer, (all) such will enter the Garden

...naturally followed immediately by a kuffar hell counter (1) hit:

And, O my people! What aileth me that I call you unto deliverance when ye call me unto the Fire? Ye call me to disbelieve in Allah and ascribe unto Him as partners that whereof I have no knowledge, while I call you unto the Mighty, the Forgiver. Assuredly that whereunto ye call me hath no claim in the world or in the Hereafter, and our return will be unto Allah, and the prodigals will be owners of the Fire.

Now even nameless secondary characters are repeating Mohammed’s stale-ass rants, this is gettin out of control tbh! But okay... telling people to be polytheists is the same as calling them unto the Fire (bad), disbelievers’ gods are fake, and those who transgress Allah’s limits are going to hell. Right. Well. On its own, I’ll leave that last one as neutral because it doesn’t specify who the “transgressors” are, even though in context it’s obvious what it means.

The guy concludes his speech by saying that Allah sees all, and then we’re back to Mohammed’s narrations in 40:45. The pharaoh’s people were punished with The Fire--they are “exposed to it morning and evening”, and will be punished even further on the Day of Judgement. Keep this in mind for tomorrow, we’re gonna have a whole fun special bonus section about it.

We have the typical scene of the peasant-disbelievers asking the leader-disbelievers in hell if they can lessen their torment, since the former were just following the lead of the latter. The leader-disbelievers will say they can’t do anything to help, but will ask the “guards of hell” for some relief. (As we saw back in the section on Mohammed’s “journey to heaven”, the angel Malik is in charge of hell and keeping its fires lit; the other "guards” serve beneath him). Alas, the guards respond in 40:50:

They say: Came not your messengers unto you with clear proofs? They say: Yea, verily. They say: Then do ye pray, although the prayer of disbelievers is in vain.

Kuffar hell counter: 2! And bad. We’ll see Malik mentioned by name in a later surah, so look forward to that. The word means “master” or “owner” (of The Fire presumably), and it is typically interpreted as the angel’s name rather than just a title, though there was some debate over that by early Islamic scholars.

Anyway... Allah helps Muslims and prophets in both life (when he isn’t inflicting “tests” upon them like Uhud, eh?) and on the Day of Judgement--a day when the wrongdoers will be cursed. Whatever. We have one last mention of how Allah gave the Torah, “a reminder for men of understanding”, to Moses to cap off that whole Exodus section, and now we’re in the last third of the surah.

Allah commands Mohammed to pray to him and ignore those who “wrangle concerning the revelations of Allah”, because those disbelievers are just prideful and wrong. They refuse to recognize that Allah’s creation of the heavens and earth (which the disbelievers do believe in) was a greater task than his creation of humanity. Ibn Kathir says this is meant to emphasize that the disbelievers’ refusal to believe in the resurrection is therefore dumb, since if creating humanity was easy for Allah, then re-creating people’s bodies would be, too. That is... not why they didn’t believe in resurrection, but sure!!

We’ll end today’s section with a typical rant about how “the blind man and the seer are not equal”, meaning Muslims and disbelievers are not equal. The latter should know that the hour of judgement is coming (NARRATOR: It wasn’t.), and on that day those who refuse to serve Allah will be sent into hell. What a cute lil kuffar hell counter (3) hit to cap off the day.

NEXT TIME: We finish the surah!

The Quran Read-Along: Day 197

Ayat: 22

Good: 1 (40:40)

Neutral: 14 (40:38-39, 40:43-45, 40:51-59)

Bad: 7 (40:41-42, 40:47-50, 40:60)

Kuffar hell counter: 3 (40:41-43, 40:47-50, 40:60)

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#196, Surah 40

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 196

It’s ya boy Moses. Again. There are actually some new, never-before-seen details in this section--details that barely impact the outcome of the story at all. GET EXCITED!!

40:24 re-introduces some of the secondary characters we’ve seen in various versions of the Exodus story thus far: Moses was denied by the pharaoh, Haman, and Korah, who “said: A lying sorcerer!”.

Y’all remember the pharaoh, obviously, and hopefully you remember Haman, the evil advisor accidentally transplanted from the Book of Esther into the Quranic Exodus. Korah is a Hebrew guy from that one story in surah 28 where he was greedy and Allah made the earth swallow him up. He was called a disbeliever in that story, but I think this is the first time we’ve been told that he accused Moses of being a liar. Hey, a new detail!

Another new detail is this:

And when he brought them the Truth from Our presence, they said: Slay the sons of those who believe with him, and spare their women. But the plot of disbelievers is in naught but error.

(I’m ignoring that last sentence because I want to talk about something else rn, DAMN IT MOHAMMED!)

When Moses starts his prophet gig, the pharaoh declares that Hebrew boys will be put to death. But the Exodus story (in the Bible and the Quran) starts with the pharaoh killing Hebrew boys, which is why Moses’ mother sends him away. From surah 28:

Pharaoh exalted himself in the land and made its people into factions, oppressing a sector among them, slaughtering their [newborn] sons and keeping their females alive. Indeed, he was of the corrupters. And We wanted to confer favor upon those who were oppressed in the land and make them leaders and make them inheritors And establish them in the land and show Pharaoh and [his minister] Haman and their soldiers through them that which they had feared. And We inspired to the mother of Moses, "Suckle him; but when you fear for him, cast him into the river and do not fear and do not grieve. Indeed, We will return him to you and will make him [one] of the messengers."

So this seems to be a second incident of Hebrew-boy-killing, taking place when Moses is an adult. (Pharaoh and Haman have been around for quite a while, evidently.) This part is not in the Bible, nor in any other suwar, and I can’t find any basis for it in Jewish or Christian texts. None of the tafsirs have much to say about it, beyond noting that it happened. So I have two theories for what happened here:

1) Mohammed just fucked up and accidentally changed the chronology in this surah--there was supposed to be only one kid-killing incident, at the intro to the Moses story.

2) Mohammed either misunderstood the “death of the firstborn” incident from the Bible (where YHWH kills all the Egyptians’ firstborn sons) or did understand it, but disliked it and therefore changed it so that the Egyptians were the ones killing kids.

The plagues that Allah/YHWH sends upon Egypt are mentioned in an ayah back in surah 7. Locusts, (water turning into) blood, lice, and frogs are all named, as in the Bible. One additional plague is mentioned--tufana, which seems to mean “flood”. There isn’t any flood mentioned in the Exodus version, but there is an enormous storm with lightning, thunder, and hail, and it’s probably supposed to refer to that. The Passover incident involving the deaths of the firstborn sons (and four other plagues preceding it: darkness, boils, diseased livestock, and a swarm of deadly animals) is not mentioned in the Quran.

So all we can say is that the Passover story was completely left out of Islam, but we can’t really conclude why that might be. Allah doesn’t have a problem killing kids who he knows will grow up to be disbelievers (see: the al-Khidr story), so it’s not like the story violated some tenet of Islam. Perhaps Mo was still uncomfortable with it, though, and thought the unfortunate genocide would work better as a plot point if the Egyptians were the ones doing it. Mohammed did have a tendency to make the various disbelieving civilizations cartoonishly evil in some suwar, whereas they come across as just skeptical or apathetic in other suwar (see: the variants of the Saleh story). So adding a line about the Egyptians killing kids twice just to make them seem extra dickish wouldn’t be unprecedented.

This question is similar to the whole thing with the Samaritan building the golden calf--sometimes it’s hard to tell if Mohammed intentionally fucked up the story because he disliked its message, or if he just did it accidentally because he got confused by similar wording or repeated themes. We’ll never know. But in this particular case, my money is on the latter.

Regardless, the pharaoh also wants to kill Moses himself because he’s afraid that Moses will “cause confusion in the land” with his religious preaching. Moses prays for Allah to protect him from the pharaoh and all other disbelievers.

In 40:28, we have yet another new addition to the story.

a believing man of Pharaoh's family (*other translations: “of Pharaoh’s folk”), who hid his faith, said: Would ye kill a man because he saith: My Lord is Allah, and hath brought you clear proofs from your Lord? 

I guess we’re just forgetting the part where the pharaoh was initially mad at Moses for killing some Egyptian guy in cold blood. Remember that? I guess that got retconned, and the pharaoh is just mad at Moses because he dislikes The True Religion in this version of the story. Hmm.

But who is this Muslim Egyptian fellow? The Jalals suggest it was the pharaoh’s unnamed cousin, though I’ve also seen him described as the pharaoh’s treasurer. A small minority read the grammar here, tortuously, as “a believing man--who hid his faith from Pharaoh’s family--said”, meaning he may not have been Egyptian at all. No one seems to know who he was, and again there aren’t any Jewish or Christian traditions I can find that contain this scene. The cousin interpretation is the most popular one in tafsir works, so let’s call him the pharaoh’s cousin.

This gentleman tells the pharaoh that no one can stop the wrath of Allah (in reference to the punishments brought upon the people of Hud, Saleh, etc, incidentally putting all of those pre-Moses in the chronology), though the pharaoh dismisses his concerns. But the cousin continues his rant, saying that he also fears that Allah will doom them in the afterlife.

I’ve been generous by designating all of the above as neutral, given the circumstances, but his rant does contain a couple of bad lines: the typical “he whom Allah sendeth astray, for him there is no guide” in 40:33 and a line stating that these astray people, who are hated by Allah, are those who doubt prophets. That ayah contains a line stating that the Egyptians doubted the revelations of Joseph many generations ago, and this is why Allah has made them go astray. But... um... did they? Wasn’t he made the chief advisor or something at the end of surah 12, because they did believe him? I mean, yeah, they didn’t become Muslims. But as far as I recall, the only people Joseph told to become Muslims were those guys in jail. Not the population in general. Right? Whatever.

The pharaoh stares at his cousin blankly for a couple of minutes and decides to ignore everything he just said, instead turning to Haman and telling him to build the pseudo-Tower of Babel. He wants to reach the "roads of the heavens" so he can see Allah (if he exists). Allah makes the pharaoh think this is a good idea, but then makes the plan end in ruin. Questionable free will violation there, but whatever.

NEXT TIME: The pharaoh’s cousin makes a return appearance for some kuffar dooming fun times!!!

The Quran Read-Along: Day 196

Ayat: 15

Good: 0

Neutral: 12 (40:23-32, 40:36-37)

Bad: 3 (40:33-40:35)

Kuffar hell counter: 0

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[quranreadalong]

#195, Surah 40

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 195

Hey kids! Eid Mubarak! Guess what I’m gonna give you as a gift? Iiiiiiit’s another shitty god damned mid-Meccan surah about how much the disbelievers of Mecca suck and will be punished like the disbelievers of old! Will the wonders never cease!

Well, there may be a small handful of Medina ayat thrown in here, but the majority of it is the same crap we’ve seen a mind-numbingly large number of times by now. Disbelievers go to hell, stories of past disbelieving civilizations getting fucked up, complaints about polytheism, the works. It’s called either Ghafir (“Forgiver”--whoever named these things had a sense of humor!) or Al-Mumin (“The Believer”/Muslim) depending on the source. Well..... god damn it. Here we go again.

Random letters (HM) start us off. “HM”, or “Hm.”, is my reaction to this surah in general. Another miracle of Islam. The Quran is from Allah, who is the only god and is also both the “Accepter of repentance” and “the Stern in punishment”.

The only people who deny Mohammed’s revelations are disbelievers, which handily concludes the “are Christians and Jews considered kuffar?” question from several suwar ago.

Mohammed then launches into some good ol’ biblical stories. Allah sent a bunch of prophets to various civilizations, and every one of those civilizations tried to argue with the prophets and “seize” them. So Allah seized them, as in killed them. As always, the point of Allah sending prophets to people when none of them ever convinced their civilizations to believe--by Allah’s own will--remains unclear.

Regardless, disbelievers are owners of the fires of hell. Sigh... kuffar hell counter: 1!, and bad. Muslims, however, are protected from hell and evil things in general by the angels around Allah’s throne, who ask him to be merciful to those who follow The Way of Allah and are “good” (good).

Back to the disbelievers. On the Day of Judgement, they will face Allah’s abhorrence. They will beg Allah for some way out of hell, but the answer is no, because they are big fat polytheists.

This is (your plight) because, when Allah only was invoked, ye disbelieved, but when some partner was ascribed to Him ye were believing.

............sigh. Kuffar hell counter: 2! and still bad.

40:13 begins an Allah-is-god section. Allah gives people provisions by sending rain from the sky, and therefore deserves to be worshiped alone. Some individuals are selected as prophets by Allah, so they can warn their people of the impending Day of Judgement, when nothing will be hidden from Allah and everyone will get what they deserve--for better or worse. Well, at least that’s neutral enough.

The “wrongdoers” will be terrified on this day, because Allah knows that they are traitors for praying to other gods. Gonna have to put that down as a bad one and a kuffar hell counter (3) hit, since it specifies it’s happening on the Day of Judgement and is therefore referring to hell-doom rather than genocide-doom. They should have known that disbelief would result in tragedy, as they have traveled the land and seen the consequences!! etc of disbelief. Allah sent prophets to all those past civilizations, “but they disbelieved; so Allah seized them.”

And that is Mohammed’s lead-in to........ the Exodus story! Again! Yaaay! Actually, it’s the Exodus-Book of Esther-Tower of Babel story, but we’ve seen that before, too. There is like one new detail this time, so have perseverance, readers. We’ll get through this.

NEXT TIME: Various people are doomed for their disbelief!

The Quran Read-Along: Day 195

Ayat: 22

Good: 1 (40:8)

Neutral: 13 (40:1-5, 40:7, 40:9, 40:11, 40:13-17)

Bad: 8 (40:6, 40:10, 40:12, 40:18-22)

Kuffar hell counter: 3 (40:6, 40:10-12, 40:18-20)

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[quranreadalong]

THE BAD QURAN, PT 38: SURAH 39

A commendable 28% (21/75) of Az-Zumar was bad, which isn’t the worst surah thus far, but it is certainly up there. This surah gave us ample material for the kuffar hell counter.

The first such line is in 39:8, in which we’re told that polytheists are “the owners of the Fire”. Those who worship gods other than Allah will be lost on the Day of Resurrection, 39:15 tells us, with 39:16 adding that they will be covered by fire. The hits just keep coming after that, with 39:23 being your typical “Allah sends people astray into disbelief” thing, repeated in 39:36, then your typical “Allah dooms people (39:24) to hell for disbelieving (39:25) anyway” thing. 39:26 says that Allah punishes disbelievers both in this world and the next.

There is no one worse than someone who denies Allah’s revelations. It’s the worst possible sin, according to 39:32. Lo! Allah haveth strange priorities.

On the Day of Judgement, the wrongdoers (disbelievers) will be surrounded by everything they believed would never happen (39:47), and they will be surrounded by the fire they refused to believe in (39:48).

An extremely long section in which Mohammed condemns disbelievers to hell starts in 39:56 and is copied in the special bonus section below. On the Day of Judgement, the disbelievers will regret mocking Mohammed, says 39:56, and will wish that Allah had guided them to Islam (39:57, and valid point tbh?). They’ll beg for a second chance, according to 39:58, but it will be too late, because they denied Mohammed’s revelations (39:59). Therefore they will go to hell (39:60).

More mild whining about disbelievers follows that, with 39:63 telling us they are losers, 39:64 declaring them foolish and ignorant, and 39:65 again calling them losers, with the implication that this means hellbound.

Finally, we are told that disbelievers will be driven to the gates of hell in 39:71, and 39:72 says they’ll be thrown inside. 

I’m.... craving barbecue for some reason.

SPECIAL BONUS SECTION: HALL OF SHAME!

The following ayat condemn disbelievers to hell and pinged our kuffar hell counter. They will be copied and pasted word-for-word. Enjoy… the doom!

And when some hurt toucheth man, he crieth unto his Lord, turning unto Him (repentant). Then, when He granteth him a boon from Him he forgetteth that for which he cried unto Him before, and setteth up rivals to Allah that he may beguile (men) from his way. Say (O Muhammad, unto such an one): Take pleasure in thy disbelief a while. Lo! thou art of the owners of the Fire.

Then worship what ye will beside Him. Say: The losers will be those who lose themselves and their housefolk on the Day of Resurrection. Ah, that will be the manifest loss! They have an awning of fire above them and beneath them a dais (of fire). With this doth Allah appal His bondmen. O My bondmen, therefor fear Me!

And it will be said unto the wrong-doers: Taste what ye used to earn. Those before them denied, and so the doom came on them whence they knew not. Thus Allah made them taste humiliation in the life of the world, and verily the doom of the Hereafter will be greater if they did but know. 

And who doth greater wrong than he who telleth a lie against Allah, and denieth the truth when it reacheth him? Will not the home of disbelievers be in hell?

there will appear unto them, from their Lord, that wherewith they never reckoned.   And the evils that they earned will appear unto them, and that whereat they used to scoff will surround them.

Turn unto your Lord repentant, and surrender unto Him, before there come unto you the doom, when ye cannot be helped.  And follow the better (guidance) of that which is revealed unto you from your Lord, before the doom cometh on you suddenly when ye know not, Lest any soul should say: Alas, my grief that I was unmindful of Allah, and I was indeed among the scoffers! Or should say: If Allah had but guided me I should have been among the dutiful! Or should say, when it seeth the doom: Oh, that I had but a second chance that I might be among the righteous!   (But now the answer will be): Nay, for My revelations came unto thee, but thou didst deny them and wast scornful and wast among the disbelievers. And on the Day of Resurrection thou (Muhammad) seest those who lied concerning Allah with their faces blackened. Is not the home of the scorners in hell?

And those who disbelieve are driven unto hell in troops till, when they reach it and the gates thereof are opened, and the warders thereof say unto them: Came there not unto you messengers of your own, reciting unto you the revelations of your Lord and warning you of the meeting of this your Day? they say: Yea, verily. But the word of doom of disbelievers is fulfilled. It is said (unto them): Enter ye the gates of hell to dwell therein. Thus hapless is the journey's end of the scorners.

You know, when I was really little, I was taught (and sincerely believed) the Quran was the most beautiful book that ever existed. My young self was a lil dumb, but at least she grew up fine.

Surah 40 is up next. It’s likely but not certain that we’ll pass day 200 while reading it. At least it’s a nice round number.

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THE GOOD QURAN, PT 38: SURAH 39

I kinda padded this surah with some filler because I had so little to talk about, given that it’s all just a “STOPPPP BEING POLYTHEISTS” rant. But we got it done in four days, which isn’t too bad. 4/75 (5%) of the surah was good.

All of them are “good Muslims go to heaven” ayat. 39:10 promises that those Muslims who do good will be rewarded in the afterlife, as does 39:34. 39:35 adds that Allah will forgive even the worst sins of Muslims..... honestly idk if this is actually good if taken to its logical extreme, but whatever. 39:53 likewise says that Allah forgives all the sins of Muslims. That precedes a long rant about how he does not forgive disbelief, which leads us to the Good Quran’s counterpart...

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#194, Surah 39

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 194

I think we’re gonna finish the surah today. Fair warning: this is very doom-heavy. It’s not gonna be the most enlightening section.

39:52 tells us that Allah gives stuff to some people and takes it away from others. Sure. Allah will forgive all the sins of Muslims (that’s relatively good), so people should repent before The Doom arrives when they least expect it. If they don’t, they’re gonna regret scoffing at Allah’s revelations and neglecting their duty towards him. That’s.... less good, and it continues in 39:58:

Or should say, when it seeth the doom: Oh, that I had but a second chance that I might be among the righteous! (But now the answer will be): Nay, for My revelations came unto thee, but thou didst deny them and wast scornful and wast among the disbelievers. And on the Day of Resurrection thou (Muhammad) seest those who lied concerning Allah with their faces blackened. Is not the home of the scorners in hell?

O........ well. Huh. That is one hell of a long kuffar hell counter (1) hit. And it’s all bad, obviously. I always appreciate it when Mohammed goes on about the “evildoers” or “unrighteous” etc being doomed, because taken literally that’s not innately bad, but then he clarifies that they’re awful people because they are disbelievers. Makes my job a lot easier. (Pious Muslims, naturally, don’t have to fear any of the above.)

Allah is god etc. Disbelievers are losers and fools and failures. (Bad.) Humans must worship Allah alone. Again, I’d like to remind everyone that he said this shit, every day, to the long-suffering polytheists of Mecca for a decade. 39:67 is vaguely interesting and at least a change of pace:

And they esteem not Allah as He hath the right to be esteemed, when the whole earth is His handful on the Day of Resurrection, and the heavens are rolled in His right hand.

At the end of the world, Allah will literally be holding the earth in his hand, with the heavens all rolled up like rolls of parchment paper in his other hand. A hadith says this was something said by a Jewish rabbi, so presumably this is some Jewish tradition. The scroll-heaven thing is in the Bible, anyway. If you’re wondering where people will be standing in this case, given that the heavens and earth are indisposed for the moment, the answer is apparently the narrow bridge over jahannam, traditionally called sirat (meaning “path”). Those who get to go to jannah will make it over the bridge, while those who do not will fall into the fires below. The speed at which Muslims will cross the bridge will vary (based on how faithful they are or how few sins they have accumulated). Evidently various groups of people in the Middle East were fond of this bridge idea, since it’s present in Zoroastrianism too. The Muslim version is just particularly ridiculous.

Anyway, in other end-of-the-world news, we have another reference to the whole angel trumpet thing that Mo yanked from the Book of Revelation. One trumpet blast will kill everyone “save him whom Allah willeth”, while another will signal the resurrection and impending judgement. Questionable, but I guess neutral. After this happens, Allah will read from “the Book”--presumably the record of everything that has ever happened/everything everyone has ever done, more on that later--and bring out the prophets as witnesses for or against people (why does he need them for this, again?). Everyone will be judged and get what’s coming to them.

The disbelievers, we are reminded yet again in 39:71, will be sent to hell for denying Allah’s revelations. Kuffar hell counter: 2! Those who were dutiful to Allah will instead be congratulated in jannah for reaching this happy end, and they will rejoice. Also angels will surround Allah’s throne and sing his praises.

...whatever.

The Quran Read-Along: Day 194

Ayat: 24

Good: 1 (39:53)

Neutral: 13 (39:52, 39:54-55, 39:61-62, 39:66-70, 39:73-75)

Bad: 10 (39:56-60, 39:63-65, 39:71-72)

Kuffar hell counter: 2 (39:54-60, 39:71-72)

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#193, Surah 39

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 193

The theme of this section is Allah leading people astray and then dooming them for going astray.

39:36 is where we’re picking it back up. Allah is the only god Muslims need, but polytheists try to convince them to worship other gods, too. They do this because they are hopelessly astray, and “He whom Allah sendeth astray, for him there is no guide”. Typical bad predestination bullshit. (Conversely, those who have been guided by Allah can never be led astray.)

We have another line stating that polytheists viewed Allah as a creator-deity in 39:38:

if thou shouldst ask them: Who created the heavens and the earth? they will say: Allah.

The real problem, Mohammed says, is that they pray to other gods in addition to Allah, like some kind of assholes. They will come to know of the everlasting doom. Funnily enough, that ayah doesn’t specify that the disbelievers are the ones who will be caught in The Doom, even though it is really, really heavily implied. So it’s gotta stay neutral. Look how generous I am, tbh.

Moving on, Allah revealed the Quran to Mohammed to tell people The Truth. 39:42 is mildly interesting, and it leads to a whole grab-bag of assorted topics...

Allah receiveth (men's) souls at the time of their death, and that (soul) which dieth not (yet) in its sleep. He keepeth that (soul) for which He hath ordained death and dismisseth the rest till an appointed term.

We saw this concept before all the way back in surah 6 (6:60). We also kinda saw it in that Seven Sleepers story in surah 18, in which Allah puts the guys to sleep for like 300 years and then wakes them up, which was originally a Christian metaphor for resurrection. The topic is mentioned in some ahadith, in which Mohammed forgives people for oversleeping since “Allah captured your souls when He willed, and returned them when He willed”. So Allah grabs your soul during sleep, checks on what you’ve done during the day (according to 6:60), then returns it to your body. Ibn Kathir calls sleeping “the little death”, which is cute.

The word for “soul” here is nafs. If you recall, way back in surah 17, we saw another word for soul: ruh. Mohammed was asked what the ruh was and had no real answer. So whether the nafs and ruh are the same “soul” or different things is unclear. Ibn Kathir records various opinions, one of which is that the ruh becomes the nafs when it is put into a person’s body--they’re the same essence, just in different contexts. That works with the hadith I mentioned above, which says that Allah takes a person’s ruh while sleeping, equating the two.

Nonetheless, others say that people possess both a ruh and nafs at the same time, and they are therefore different things; in this interpretation, the ruh is what makes you alive, while the nafs is your mind/ego/whatever. That has less textual support, but it’s still a fairly common view. In that case, the nafs is the thing taken by Allah when you sleep, while the ruh remains, regardless of that hadith. There has never been a unanimous consensus on this, and the fact that Mohammed never even defined what he meant by ruh doesn’t help.

Interestingly, the Jewish Bible also uses two related terms to refer to a soul--ruach and nephesh, which surely must be etymologically related to ruh and nafs. From what I can tell, there was likewise a debate on whether those terms differed or not by rabbis. And in Christian theology there has also been disagreement over whether the psyche (ego/mind) and pneuma (essence of life) are different or the same. None of the three Abrahamic religions know wtf is happening with the core of their own goddamn theology.

That unexpected linguistics discussion was grab-bag topic #1. The second one is a sleep-related side note. I just wanna mention that according to the ahadith, Allah sends visions of the future to people as they dream, while Shaytan can also inhabit dreams in order to scare or mislead people. This concept is, of course, not unique to Islam--remember the Joseph story?--and pre-Islamic people in Arabia believed the gods could communicate visions to them in dreams too. (The term for a priestess in the South Arabian language literally meant “dreamer”.) Presumably Allah sends the dreams to you after he’s stuck your soul back in your body.

Finally, Allah doesn’t like it when you sleep on your stomach. Sleep on your side--specifically your right side, like Mohammed--or your back. Do not ask me why Allah has favored sleeping positions. Lo! His mind is unknowable.

Alright, let’s get back on track here. 39:43 reminds us the disbelievers’ gods are fake because Allah is the only god. Allah’s name brings joy to believers and gloom to disbelievers. In conclusion, Allah is god etc.

Right. Well. Virtually the entire rest of the surah, from here onwards, could be included on the kuffar hell counter, but I’ll try to use it sparingly. We’ll start this part today and finish it up tomorrow.

The wrongdoers will try to save themselves on the Day of Judgement, which they did not believe would happen--but “that whereat they used to scoff will surround them”. That’s bad and counts as a hit on the counter (1).

Sometimes Allah inflicts “tests” upon people--they suffer, they pray to Allah, then he relieves them of their suffering. But they wrongly attribute their increased fortunes to dumb shit like “I used my brain to get me out of that” instead of praising Allah. Ingrates! They should remember what happened to the wrongdoers of olden times: they were “smote” by Allah. Technically not a kuffar hell counter hit, so I’ll let that one slide. We’ll pick it back up there next time.

NEXT TIME: Zzzzz doom zzzzz

The Quran Read-Along: Day 193

Ayat: 16

Good: 0

Neutral: 13 (39:37-46, 39:49-51)

Bad: 3 (39:36, 39:47-48)

Kuffar hell counter: 1 (39:47-48)

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[quranreadalong]

#192, Surah 39

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 192

Let’s get the kuffar hell counter fired up (get it), lads.

39:15 is where we left off. Allah declares, in regards to those who worship other gods, that “the losers” will lose themselves and their families on the Day of Resurrection. Fire will engulf them from above and below. This is meant to cause people to fear Allah and his punishment. Those who turn against their false gods and convert to Islam have nothing to fear, of course, because they have been guided by Allah to the correct path. Two bad ayat followed by two neutral ones, and kuffar hell counter: 1!

The baffling predestination thing comes up again in 39:19, in which we are told that Mohammed cannot save those whom Allah has decided are hellbound. I mean, fine, but then what’s the fuckin point of all these repetitive Meccan suwar, man? Just say your piece and go, the ppl Allah’s decided will become Muslims will listen to the first one and the rest are going to hell anyway!

Whatever... people who remain dutiful towards Allah will be rewarded in jannah, Allah sends rain and makes crops grow, etc etc etc. Then we swing back to the topic we were just discussing: Allah declares woe unto those who refuse to follow Mohammed, who are “in plain error”--while emphasizing that he is the one who sends people hopelessly astray. I mean... I’ve asked this before, but I’m not insane here, right? This is bad and makes no sense at all, right? Right??

Ignoring Allah’s personality disorder for the moment, let’s talk about the Day of Judgement itself. The doomed ones will be told to “Taste what ye used to earn” on that day. We are needlessly told how they “earned” this fate in 39:25-26:

Those before them denied, and so the doom came on them whence they knew not. Thus Allah made them taste humiliation in the life of the world, and verily the doom of the Hereafter will be greater if they did but know.

Kuffar hell counter: 2! Denying a prophet results in both misery in this world and the next one, except for those times that Allah said he was letting the Quraysh live in wealth and happiness because Mohammed wasn’t able to battle them yet he was leading them even further astray. Sure!

Next topic. The Quran is a revelation from Allah, in Arabic. It contains many incredible allegories, such as...

Allah coineth a similitude: A man in relation to whom are several part-owners, quarrelling, and a man belonging wholly to one man. Are the two equal in similitude? Praise be to Allah! But most of them know not. 

...r-right! Sick burn, Allah! (This is supposed to mean a slave belonging to several masters with differing personalities and desires--polytheists--is worse than one who belongs to only one master--Muslims.)

Let’s end with this next bit. Everyone will die and be brought before Allah on the Day of Judgement. They will all dispute with one another then, and the disbelievers will be sent to hell (kuffar hell counter: 3! And we haven’t even hit 20 ayat in this section yet. Impressive, tbh) while Muslims will go to jannah. Besides that one bad line, all of that is neutral.

I rarely end sections on a good note, so let me do that today, with a couple of ayat about how Allah will reward good Muslims by forgiving their sins. According to a hadith, every person who sincerely believes in Islam will go to jannah, even if they committed sins, and we’ll see later in this surah that this means all sins of Muslims.

Granted, there are some ayat and ahadith that state that other things will get you sent to hell--intentionally killing a Muslim and/or someone who Mohammed has specifically guaranteed protection to, for example. A verse back in surah 4 says that murdering a Muslim (outside the context of war or “retributive justice” etc) gets you sent to hell, with no exceptions or unless... qualifiers mentioned. But most Muslim scholars think the “Allah forgives everything except shirk” lines overrule those other ones, and the only thing that will guarantee your ass a spot in hell is dying as a disbeliever.

Uh.... that was supposed to be a happy ending...

NEXT TIME: Allah guideth, Allah leadeth astray.

The Quran Read-Along: Day 192

Ayat: 21

Good: 2 (39:34-35)

Neutral: 12 (39:17-22, 39:27-31, 39:33)

Bad: 7 (39:15-16, 39:23-26, 39:32)

Kuffar hell counter: 3 (39:15-16, 39:24-26, 39:32)

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#191, Surah 39

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 191

I’m curious to see where we’ll be at day #200. Inshallah, it will be a surah better than this one. Surah 39 is called Az-Zumar (“The Groups” or “The Companies”... of disbelievers being driven into hell), it comes from the mid-Mecca days and it is a skippable surah in the sense that there ain’t anything in here we haven’t seen before. The entire thing is one long kuffar hell counter hit.

Well.... let’s do this. Again.

The Quran is from Allah, and it was sent to Mohammed so he could tell everyone the “truth”. The truth in question is that Allah is the only god, and Allah will judge those liars who believe otherwise at the end of the world. Riveting.

This surah might be a bit light on the commentary, given how much of it is just repeated material. Let’s see if we have anything to work with here... 39:4:

If Allah had willed to choose a son, He could have chosen what He would of that which He hath created.

Allah could have made someone his son, but he didn’t, because he didn’t want to share his Netflix account with any family members. We’ve seen this reference to Allah’s non-son before. Sometimes it’s in reference to Christians (Jesus), and in Mohammed’s delusional mind it could also be a reference to Jews (remember the Ezra thing from surah 9?). But this is a Meccan surah, directed at polytheists... and the Quran implies that the polytheists believed Allah only had daughters, not sons. So who is the son of Allah that Mohammed is ranting about here?

If you remember surah 6, which is also a Meccan surah but may have some ayat from Medina stuck in it, we came across this:

Yet they ascribe as partners unto Him the jinn, although He did create them, and impute falsely, without knowledge, sons and daughters unto Him.

Who ascribes sons and daughters to Allah? Disbelievers in general, including Christians and Jews? It doesn’t give the identity of the evildoers in question, so we don’t know. Like I said in surah 37, the relationships between all the gods of the pre-Islamic pantheon remain obscure because of how little was written down--the Quran tells us that Allah+Allat+Manat+al-Uzza were a family, but nothing beyond that. A later verse in the Quran implies that the polytheists believed Allah had a wife or multiple wives, the mothers of his daughters, and their identities are also unknown. So it’s possible Allah was believed to have a son, or multiple sons, maybe including Hubal or one of the other gods popular in the area. Or the verse is just complaining about Christians and Jews. We dunno!

Moving on, Allah made the heavens and earth and night and day etc. He also created humanity and... eight types of farm animals. (Ibn Kathir says this means “a pair of sheep, a pair of goats, a pair of camels and a pair of oxen”). Some people are nonetheless insufficiently thankful towards Allah, and this displeases him. Allah is especially displeased by people who only pray to Allah in bad times, and pray to other gods in good times. Our first kuffar hell counter (1) hit follows that:

Take pleasure in thy disbelief a while. Lo! thou art of the owners of the Fire.

Bad, the rest so far is neutral. Allah also reminds us that those who pray to him are not equal to those who do not, which is his typical nonsense, but then adds that good Muslims will be rewarded with jannah, which is good.

Mohammed finishes up today’s section in 39:11 by informing us for the seven thousandth time that Allah has commanded him to be a Muslim--the Muslim--not a polytheist. Allah will punish him with The Doom if he disobeys this order, so he must obey and worship Allah alone. Mohammed’s dramatic ass pretending to threaten himself is neutral.

NEXT TIME: Doom, fire, woe, hell, etc.

The Quran Read-Along: Day 191

Ayat: 14

Good: 1 (39:10)

Neutral: 12 (39:1-7, 39:9, 39:11-14)

Bad: 1 (39:8)

Kuffar hell counter: 1 (39:8)

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THE BAD QURAN, PT 37: SURAH 38

This surah wasn’t too bad, right? In terms of length, I mean. We only spent four sections on it, and the fourth was pretty much useless. 16% of the surah is bad, amounting to 14 ayat.

The surah started off on a shitty note, with 38:2 informing us that disbelievers are prideful before reminding us that Allah has destroyed many similar disbelieving civilizations in the past (38:3). We’re told that he did this because they denied the prophets sent to them in 38:14.

In 38:26, Allah speaks to David and tells him that those who stray from Allah’s path will face the awful doom. 38:27 clarifies that this refers to disbelievers being flung into hell, which is a just punishment, since they are wicked and spread corruption (38:28).

A long, frothy bad section begins in 38:55, which says that those who “transgress” the limits imposed by Allah will be sent to hell (38:56), where they will be burned (38:57) and/or exposed to extreme cold and/or tortured in general (38:58). Mohammed tells his typical story of the hellbound disbelievers turning on one another in 38:59, where those in The Fire will see other disbelievers getting thrown inside. They’ll say that the incoming group caused the currently-in-hell group to be hellbound in the first place (38:60)--because they were their ancestors and passed down their polytheism, or leaders who convinced the common folk to be polytheists, etc--and for that reason they deserve double the punishment (38:61). We’ve seen in other suwar that they all deserve the same punishment for being disbelievers, but an attempt was made!

Finally, in the story of Iblis/Shaytan getting thrown out of heaven, Allah allows Shaytan to wander around corrupting humanity (besides Muslims who cannot be corrupted, obviously), then in 38:85 says that anyone who follows Shaytan will be sent to hell. Just send his ass to hell in the first damn place, moron! Allah is always causing so many needless problems smh.

SPECIAL BONUS SECTION: HALL OF SHAME!

The following ayat condemn disbelievers to hell and pinged our kuffar hell counter. They will be copied and pasted word-for-word. Enjoy… the doom!

Lo! those who wander from the way of Allah have an awful doom, forasmuch as they forgot the Day of Reckoning.  And We created not the heaven and the earth and all that is between them in vain. That is the opinion of those who disbelieve. And woe unto those who disbelieve, from the Fire!

The next surah is......... another shitty mid-Meccan one!! I promise we will get back to Medina eventually and we also will finally read those mysterious suwar from Mohammed’s early days at some point. But first we must slog through more rants about The Disbelievers and their shirky silliness. It’s only 75 ayat long, shorter than this one was, so we’ll be okay. Probably.

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THE GOOD QURAN, PT 37: SURAH 38

There is one sole good ayah among surah 38′s 88 ayat (barely 1%). Behold! King David’s speech to the accidentally-literal shepherds, 38:24:

(David) said: He hath wronged thee in demanding thine ewe in addition to his ewes, and lo! many partners oppress one another, save such as believe and do good works, and they are few.

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#190, Surah 38

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 190

Today we’re gonna quickly wrap up the surah. There isn’t anything new here, so this is very much a skip-it-if-you-want section.

38:65 starts us off. Mohammed is a prophet, Allah is god. Great. The people of Mecca turn away from Allah’s wonderful revelations and therefore suck. Cool. Mo again emphasizes that he has been sent as a warner, and we have an exciting rundown of the Iblis story for the hundredth time after that, called the dispute of the “Highest Chiefs” (angels) here.

Allah tells the angels that he’s gonna create a mortal out of clay, and they have to bow before this mortal clay-man when he’s done. All of them do so, except Iblis. Allah asks him what’s good; Iblis says he’s cooler than Adam, since Adam is made of clay while Iblis is made of fire (being a jinni-angel), and therefore he refuses to be subservient to him. Allah kicks Iblis out of heaven and curses him for his disobedience.

Iblis/Shaytan asks Allah if he can delay his punishment til the Day of Judgement in 38:79. Allah’s like “uhh sure I guess?”, and Iblis replies “shit man thank you, imma just go mislead all humans now, except muslims”. Allah is fine with this and says he’ll just send the humans who are not “single-minded slaves of Allah” to hell.

Mohammed is very proud of himself for relating the above tedious crap and announces he’s not even asking for anyone’s money in return for his “reminders”. The Quraysh will realize he’s telling the truth eventually.

Zzzzz. Pretty much all of that is neutral, and extremely boring. The part where Allah says he’ll send the followers of Shaytan to hell is a heavily implied kuffar hell counter hit, but still, it’s not explicit. So the counter can stay blank. But I will put that one line down as bad, because really, Allah is letting Shaytan mislead people and then sentencing them to hell for it. Rude.

Hey, at least we got a tiny bit of new material yesterday.

The Quran Read-Along: Day 190

Ayat: 24

Good: 0

Neutral: 23 (38:65-84, 38:86-88)

Bad: 1 (38:85)

Kuffar hell counter: 0

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#189, Surah 38

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 189

We’re halfway through the surah, and today we have some brand new material to work with! 38:41 brings up a name most of you are familiar with, though his story hasn’t appeared in the Quran until now:

And make mention (O Muhammad) of Our bondman Job, when he cried unto his Lord (saying): Lo! the devil doth afflict me with distress and torment.

Yeah, it’s Job. This is actually the only place in the Quran his story is even briefly mentioned, and all that’s said about it is this:

(And it was said unto him): Strike the ground with thy foot. This (spring) is a cool bath and a refreshing drink. And We bestowed on him (again) his household and therewith the like thereof, a mercy from Us, and a memorial for men of understanding. And (it was said unto him): Take in thine hand a branch and smite therewith, and break not thine oath. Lo! We found him steadfast, how excellent a slave!

It... isn’t a lot, as you can see! All we got is 1) Job is being tormented by Shaytan, 2) Allah gives Job some water and returns him to his happy family, 3) Allah tells Job to pick up... a thing (the word translated as “branch” is a vague term meaning a bundle of something) and strike.... something with it to fulfill an oath. And that’s it, that’s all it says. So what the hell.

Our pal Job here wasn’t one of Mohammed’s favorite prophets, probably because his Biblical story doesn’t have a lot of action or heroic moments--and also because it raises uncomfortable questions about YHWH/Allah’s character. Mo greatly preferred talking about Solomon’s wizard adventures and Moses killing disbelievers. Because of that, Job’s story in Islam is very fragmented, even bringing the ahadith into it (the one in the two sahih books is this). And like the Bible, we are never told when or where his story takes place.

Let’s try to figure out what’s happening in these ayat. To recap the biblical story, the wealthy Job is afflicted with all sorts of misery by Satan (who is an angel here--not a fallen angel--who tests humans) to test the idea that a fortunate person will stop worshiping YHWH once his favor is taken away from him. Job does not understand why he is being punished and asks YHWH what the fuck his problem is, with the latter basically pulling the “no one can know the mind of God” card. Job admits this is true and praises YHWH. YHWH is satisfied and Job’s torments cease.

Al-Tabari’s second volume has basically the same story:

[Shaytan] asked God to give him power over Job in order to seduce him away from his religion. God gave Iblis mastery over Job's possessions [and children] ... meaning the right to inflict disaster, and seduction which no man can withstand

Shaytan in al-Tabari’s version of the story goes on to destroy Job’s wealth and possessions and children, causing the people around him (al-Tabari isn’t sure if Job is meant to be Jewish or a non-Jewish person living after the time of Abraham) to believe he has done something to deserve his punishment. But Job continues to pray to Allah and acknowledge his supremacy, and so Allah stops tormenting him via Shaytan. This is where the first two ayat come into play--with Allah giving him water (“Job bathed in it and regained the beauty and handsomeness which had been his before his tribulations”) and returning him back to his family. All that seems reasonable enough, but what’s up with the “smite” line?

All of the main tafsirs (including the Jalals and Ibn Kathir, plus al-Tabari) record the opinion that the thing Job is hitting is his wife. The story is always the same. Ibn Kathir:

[Job] got angry with his wife and was upset about something she had done, so he swore an oath that if Allah healed him, he would strike her with one hundred blows. When Allah healed him, how could her service, mercy, compassion and kindness be repaid with a beating? So Allah showed him a way out, which was to take a bundle of thin grass, with one hundred stems, and hit her with it once. Thus he fulfilled his oath and avoided breaking his vow.

Job’s wife continued to stay with him and comfort him even after their children and possessions were all taken away from them, but he had vowed to Allah that he’d beat her over some unmentioned thing. Once he saw how kind his wife was, he no longer wanted to carry out the beating, but he was bound to it because it was an oath sworn to Allah. So he struck her a hundred times with something other than his hand (a bundle of sticks, stems, or small branches, depending on the version). That way, he didn’t break his vow to Allah!

I have no idea where this part of the story comes from, and I can’t find it in any Jewish or Christian sources. It’s not in the Book of Job. But I guess it must’ve been well-known in the 7th/8th centuries because virtually all early commentaries on that verse mention it. There is this (mostly) unrelated first-century Greek/Egyptian story called the Testament of Job that puts a different spin on the story, so presumably there were various AU fanfics of the Book of Job kicking around by Mohammed’s era.

Anyway. Uhh... well! Since that whole wife-beating part isn’t explicitly stated in the Quran, I guess I can leave it as neutral. Even though Job’s suffering and the fact that he had to fulfill his dumb wife-beating vow were Allah’s fault in the first damn place. What a weird story, no wonder why Mohammed didn’t like it tbh.

There are a few more brief mentions of other prophets with no elaboration--Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all excellent prophets who kept the afterlife in mind; and Ishmael, Elisha, and "Dhul-Kifl", with nothing said about the latter as per usual.

Then in 38:49 we pivot to the typical stuff about how the Quran is a reminder, how pious Muslims will go to jannah after the Day of Judgement and eat and drink while reclining on couches there. The jannah ladies with “modest gazes” are mentioned again. Allah declares all of the above “our provision”. Still neutral, if creepy.

We’ll finish off the day with this next part, about the jannah-dwellers’ less-fortunate counterparts in The Fire. The transgressors will be burned in hell (and also exposed to ice cold--hell has both hot and cold zones!) and tortured in general there. Lovely. Let me mention a quick hadith in relation to this:

Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "The (Hell) Fire complained to its Lord saying, 'O my Lord! My different parts eat up each other.' So, He allowed it to take two breaths, one in the winter and the other in summer, and this is the reason for the severe heat and the bitter cold you find (in weather).

Another scientific miracle of Islam.

We have our usual scene of the disbelievers complaining about each other in hell. If you recall, there are two variants of this dumb story, one in which the two groups are leaders vs common people of polytheistic societies and the other in which it’s later generations vs previous generations of polytheists. Both apply here. One group will accuse the other of sending them to hell (with their polytheism) and ask Allah to double the latter’s punishment. They will all notice that none of the people they considered “wicked” are among them in hell, and will wonder if they were mistaken in their views of those (Muslim) people. The answer is yes, obviously.

Well. You know, that whole part doesn’t actually specify that the “transgressors” are disbelievers, despite the heavy implications, so it’s not a kuffar hell counter hit. The last few lines are neutral, but the torture stuff is pretty bad. Let’s get out of here.

NEXT TIME: The quick conclusion to the surah, filled with the typical shit!!!

The Quran Read-Along: Day 189

Ayat: 24

Good: 0

Neutral: 17 (38:41-54, 38:62-64)

Bad: 7 (38:55-61)

Kuffar hell counter: 0

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[quranreadalong]

#188, Surah 38

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 188

BIG NEWS: Today we have some prophet stories that do not involve the horrible deaths of The Disbelievers. Savor this moment.

38:20 is where we’re starting, again with David. Allah made him a good ruler of the kingdom of Israel. One day, David was chilling out in his palace when some guys climbed a wall to get to him. David was scared, but they weren’t there to hurt him. They said:

(We are) two litigants, one of whom hath wronged the other, therefor judge aright between us; be not unjust; and show us the fair way. Lo! this my brother hath ninety and nine ewes while I had one ewe; and he said: Entrust it to me, and he conquered me in speech.

Brother #1 bullies brother #2 into giving him his only sheep. David says this is unfair and unjust (I guess that’s good?), and he realizes that this whole incident was just Allah testing him. He passed the test by saying “hey that’s dickish”, evidently, because it caused Allah to ensure his place in jannah and “forgive him” for, uh, something.

It doesn’t actually say what bad thing David did that required this test. However, tafsir authors usually connect this to the Biblical story of David and Solomon’s mother Bathsheba--involving David sending Bathsheba’s first husband to the front lines in the hope that he’d die so David could marry Bathsheba himself. The Jalals say this test was related to “his love for that woman”. That story isn’t in the Quran or the ahadith, but this whole incident above is pretty obviously based on the prophet Nathan’s speech in which he yells at David for betraying Bathsheba’s husband:

And he came unto him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds: But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.

And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man's lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him.

And David's anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the LORD liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die: And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.

And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.

The Quran doesn’t really get the story right, as you can see. Nathan’s telling the story as an allegory here; the two shepherds themselves aren’t present and aren’t meant to be literal people. But God using the rich guy who takes the poor guy’s only sheep to show David the error of his ways is the same. Interestingly, God does not forgive David for this in the Bible (though he does grant him a son from Bathsheba), even though he does in the Quran. So this could be a case where Mohammed’s unwillingness to depict prophets making mistakes comes into play. Maybe he really liked the whole sheep-allegory-from-Allah idea, but did not like David’s lustful behavior that preceded it, so he was intentionally vague regarding what, exactly, David did wrong. I dunno.

Anyway, after that test, Allah reminds David that he shouldn’t stray from the “path of Allah” again, since people who do that are doomed. That’s bad, and just in case you were willing to give Mo the benefit of the doubt and say “eh, maybe he meant stray from the path of Allah in terms of being unjust or whatever, cuz of the story?”, Allah helpfully adds “And woe unto those who disbelieve, from the Fire!” to kick it into kuffar hell counter (1) territory. Nice. He drives the point home by asking if he should treat corrupters and good Muslims the same way, or in other words if “the pious and the wicked” deserve equal treatment (the answer is no). Dividing people into “the pious” and “the wicked” is bad--especially when paired with the above ayah.

Moving on to the second half of today’s section, following a brief reminder that Allah sent the Quran to Mohammed: a story about Solomon. It begins in 38:31, in which he sees a group of really fast horses. Solomon reflects upon his past behavior, realizing that he’s preferred worldly goods to praising Allah. Then he stands up and asks his attendants to bring the horses before him. Solomon.... then.... does something to the horses. It’s not actually clear what. The verb used describes a swiping motion. Some translators interpret this as him slashing at the horses with a sword, while others say it’s more like passing his hands over them (like petting them).

Uh..... right. What was that all about?

In the “slashing” interpretation, Solomon’s moment of reflection here causes him to realize how pointless his possessions are. The Bible says that Solomon’s wealth included thousands of horses, and so they were a symbol of his decadence. Killing them represents destroying his own wealth so he can re-focus on worshiping Allah. The other interpretation is, uh, he just wanted to pet the horsies. Ibn Kathir records both opinions and shows that some people were clearly uncomfortable with the horse-killing one (Arabs loved horses) even though it seems pretty obvious that that’s what Mohammed meant. I’ll leave it as neutral, just to be fair.

The Jalals bridge this story and the next one by saying “God compensated him what was better and faster that these [horses], and this was the wind”. Remember Demon Jinn Lord Solomon from a few suwar ago? Well, we have a sidestory to that here in 38:34:

We tried Solomon, and set upon his throne a (mere) body. Then did he repent. 

One day, the story goes, Solomon lost his magic ring, thereby losing his magic powers. This was evidently due to Allah’s displeasure over Solomon’s greed and/or his foreign, idolatrous wives. A jinni then disguised himself as Solomon and sat on his throne, depriving Solomon of his kingship, and he couldn’t prove that he was the real Solomon owing to his ring being lost. So Solomon was thrown out of his own kingdom. Eventually, after a month or so, Allah decided that Solomon had been punished enough and returned the ring to him. This is based on a story from the Talmud:

Ashmedai said to him: Take the chain engraved with God’s name off me and give me your ring with God’s name engraved on it, and I will show you my strength. Solomon took the chain off him and he gave him his ring. Ashmedai swallowed the ring and grew until he placed one wing in the heaven and one wing on the earth. He threw Solomon a distance of four hundred parasangs. With regard to that moment Solomon said: “What profit is there for a person through all of his toil under the sun?” (Ecclesiastes 1:3). With Solomon deposed from the throne, Ashmedai took his place. 

There aren’t any ahadith describing what Mohammed was talking about in the verse above, but it does seem like this story is almost certainly what’s being referenced by “setting” an impostor upon his throne, as nearly all tafsir works mention it. Regardless, Mohammed informs us that Allah forgave Solomon for whatever it was that he did wrong, and restored his powers and kingship. He allowed Solomon to control the jinn, who had powers over the wind and building abilities and such. They were kept in chains during their servitude.

I always feel weird about that, because as we’ll see later, the jinn are depicted as just a kind of... fantasy race of people. They’re not all evil, unlike the demons in the Talmudic/early Christian Demon Lord Solomon stories. Mohammed conflated the jinn and demons without putting a ton of thought into it. So the Islamic Solomon is just straight-up enslaving people by Allah’s will. O well! The jinn-controlling magic power was a gift from Allah and Solomon got a ticket to jannah in the end.

NEXT TIME: One prophet left, and it’s a new one!!!

The Quran Read-Along: Day 188

Ayat: 21

Good: 1 (38:24)

Neutral: 17 (38:20-23, 38:25, 38:29-40)

Bad: 3 (38:26-28)

Kuffar hell counter: 1 (38:26-27)

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[quranreadalong]

#187, Surah 38

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 187

Y’all ever just feel really fuckin bad for the polytheists of Mecca, forced to endure this unending stream of bullshit from the mouth of Mohammed? Where it’s not just constant hatred and insults towards their religion, but it’s the same insults over and over? I think about this a lot.

This surah is from the mid-Meccan era, with Ibn Ishaq’s sira placing it around the time Abu Talib got sick (~618 AD). It is aptly titled “Sad”, which is the random letter it starts with but also the emotion it evokes. Because of this, I have chosen a brief happy scene in the surah as our title image, to make it a little more pleasant. Say hello to King David. The hills are alive with the sound of his hymns to Allah.

We begin with a less-happy topic:

those who disbelieve are in false pride and schism. How many a generation We destroyed before them, and they cried out when it was no longer the time for escape!

Yeah, we get into the bullshit immediately in 38:2-3. Sigh. Bad, and this very much sets the tone for the rest of the chapter, so get used to it.

Mohammed complains that the people of Mecca say he’s just your standard diviner who’s peddling lies. They refuse to believe in monotheism and cling to their ancestral religion, ignoring Mohammed’s rants and labeling them 100% bullshit.

Ol’ Mo is naturally deeply aggrieved by all of this. He informs them that they have not yet experienced Allah’s wrath--implying that if they had, they’d know better than to disobey him. He asks them if they think they will receive mercy from Allah, or if they are in charge of the earth and heavens, which belong to Allah. The answer to both questions is “no”, of course. If the disbelievers disagree, then they are free to try to ascend to the heavens. They’ll just be defeated by Allah’s forces, like the disbelievers of olden times.

That’s our cue to get out the checklist in 38:12: Noah's people, Hud's people, the Egyptians in Exodus, Saleh's people, the Sodomites, Shuaib's people. “Not one of them but did deny the messengers, therefor My doom was justified”, Allah assures us, which is bad. (Again, this is talking about him murdering everyone, not specifically dooming them to hell--though they will also go to hell, make no mistake!--so the kuffar hell counter will remain blank for now.)

Mohammed warns his people that like the stops of Allah’s Genocide Tour of yore, one “Shout” is all it will take to bring them down. But the disbelievers are unmoved by his threats, and tell him “yeah yeah, alright buddy. Tell Allah that if he wants us to believe you, just do the whole divine wrath thing already and get it over with.”

Allah consoles Mohammed over his people’s refusal to believe him by reminding him of the story of David, and we’re given another Disney Princess description of him:

We subdued the hills to hymn the praises (of their Lord) with him at nightfall and sunrise, And the birds assembled; all were turning unto Him.

We’ve seen this before, like in surah 34. It’s obviously supposed to be based on David’s whole musical shtick in the Bible, but I believe the implication here is that the mountains and birds are literally participating in David’s little musical number, which is kind of adorable tbh. The Sound of Music up in here.

Let’s leave it there for today, but expect to see more of David tomorrow.

NEXT TIME: Father-son story time!!!

The Quran Read-Along: Day 187

Ayat: 19

Good: 0

Neutral: 16 (38:1, 38:4-13, 38:15-19)

Bad: 3 (38:2-3, 38:14)

Kuffar hell counter: 0

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