Qur’an 4: Food, friends, frustration…and Jinn

I’m a British humanist reading The Qur’an (Tarif Khalidi’s translation) and blogging about it as I go. I’m doing my best not to make assumptions, apart from assuming it was written – not necessarily in the order given – by a man (or men) in Arabia in the 7th century. I realise that some Muslims will consider the whole exercise blasphemous, and some anti-theists will say it’s not critical enough. The aim is not to be offensive, but simply to share a personal, non-scholarly, view of one of the most influential texts of our time. [More…]

Chapter 5 “The Table” and Chapter 6 “Cattle” indeed give dietary laws and put followers right on false rules about cattle. But as in previous chapters, there’s a lot more covered, and it’s fairly disorganised.

Let’s start with some more moral rules:

There’s a clear general injunction about killing: “…he who kills a soul neither in revenge for another, nor to prevent corruption on earth, it is as if he killed the whole of mankind; whereas he who saves a soul, it is as if he has saved all of mankind”.

In one sense this goes further than the Biblical “Thou shall not kill” because it also encourages action to save life. On the other hand it sanctions the murder of innocent people as proportionate revenge. And “preventing corruption on earth” is a very ambiguous exemption. Presumably it covers capital punishment for crime, but only a few verses later he says that “…the punishment of those who make war against God and His Messenger and roam the earth corrupting it, is that they be killed, or crucified, or have their hands and feet amputated alternately, or be exiled from the land.”

Near the end of Cattle is another list of moral rules. As well as the general injunction: “Whoso begets a good deed shall be rewarded tenfold; who begets an evil deed shall only be punished once” there’s a list of more specific items. Most are clear and sensible: “show loving kindness towards parents”; don’t kill “your infants for fear of poverty”; “be fair in weights and measures, act equitably”; “do not kill the soul which God has sanctified except in justice”; “do not come near the property of the orphan, except with the best intentions, until the orphan has attained the age of maturity”; “if you pass judgement, be just even if a kinsman is involved…”.

But a couple are unclear: “do not come near indecencies, whether out in the open or else concealed” – no doubt that’s attracted plenty of scholarly interpretation; and “We charge no soul except what it can bear” which, strangely, comes immediately after the one about weights and measures.

Also in “The Table” is the punishment for male and female thieves: “…cut their hand as a penalty for what they reaped – a punishment from God…But whoso repents after his transgression and does good deeds, God shall pardon him…”. There might be some wriggle-room if the Arabic word behind “cut” is not the same as “amputate”, and it’s not clear whether good deeds can avoid both punishment on earth and in the afterlife. But….

On the other hand, the Qur’an improves on the Torah’s “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” rule. He doesn’t contradict it – it fits with his injunction about retaliation being proportionate – but adds: “Whoso freely forgives this right, it shall be counted as expiation for him.”

These chapters also make clearer how the Qur’an’s author sees the relationship between revelations from God and the individuals and communities to which they were directed.

He underlines that the Jewish Torah, the Christian “Evangel” (New Testament) and the Qur’an are all revelations from the same deity: “To you We [God] revealed the Book with the Truth, confirming previous scriptures and witnessing their veracity.”

And he lists Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, David, Solomon, Job, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Zachariah, John [presumably the baptist], Jesus, Elijah, Ishmael, Elisha [not clear who that is], Jonah, Lot “all of whom We preferred above mankind. So too their fathers, their progeny and their brothers…They are the ones to whom we granted the Book, the law and the prophesy.” It’s a strange list. I’m no Biblical scholar but, as it looks like he means by the “Torah” the whole of the Old Testament – not just the first five books – he seems to have forgotten about big hitters like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, while relatively minor ones like Zachariah make the cut. And wasn’t David an adulterous king rather than a prophet?

As he believes all three books are revelations from God, he doesn’t contradict them but he repeats (multiple times) that the idea that Jesus was the Son of God, and that he was part of a Trinity, are blasphemy: “It is blasphemy they utter, those who say that God is the third of three!”. Ascribing “partners to God” is forbidden. I think he’s correct that neither the Trinity nor a clear claim that Jesus is the Son of God are actually in the New Testament.

But he repeats the fundamental – if understandable – mistake of thinking that, apart from God and Jesus, the other member of the Trinity is Mary, as in this conversation between God and Jesus: “Remember when God said to Jesus son of Mary: ‘Did you really say to people: “Take me and my mother as two gods, instead of God”?’ He [Jesus] said: “…I said nothing to them except what you commanded me: “Worship God, my Lord and your Lord.”

These mix-ups would fit with the tradition that the author was illiterate. If so, he couldn’t have read the Torah or the “Evangel” for himself and presumably had to rely on what he’d understood from the Jews and Christians he’d encountered.

Although he thinks the Torah, “Evangel” and Qur’an all come from the same deity, some of the laws they contain are apparently community-specific: “For every community We decreed a law and a way of life.” God could have simply made everyone into a single community but decided not to “in order to test you in what he revealed to you. So vie with one another in virtue.” (He deployed the same “test” argument in an earlier chapter to explain why bad things happen to believers.) The implication here is that the “law and way of life” specified in the Qur’an is intended just for the community who received it. For example, he tries to pre-empt people who argue that it was unfair to expect them to meet God’s expectations because “The Book was only revealed to two communities [Jews and Christians] before us”. His response is that “…manifest proof has now come to you from your Lord” in the form of the Qur’an.

Is the “you” here just the Arab tribes of Arabia – his community? There’s nothing to suggest he envisaged a wider community of believers. Did he know that Christians were not a single community? Even if communities are different, why are God’s laws inconsistent? It isn’t clear.

And here’s something potentially controversial, also alluded to in an earlier chapter: he uses Moses’ exhortation to the people of Israel: “O people, enter the holy land which God has marked out for you…” to illustrate what happens when you don’t follow His commands. Apparently they were afraid of the “men of great might” who already occupied the land and refused to attack; their punishment was that the land was “forbidden to them for forty years”. So the Qur’an apparently says that there is a God-given Jewish homeland in the Middle East. It just doesn’t say where this “holy land” was.

While God has done his bit to provide the Jews and Christians with revelation, the author isn’t impressed by their adherence to it: “If only the People of the Book…practice the Torah and the Evangel”. He’s even critical of Jews who have asked him to act as a judge for them “…when they already have the Torah, in which is found the judgement of God”. The Christians have “forgotten a portion of what they were asked to remember” (presumably the Torah), although he concedes that “priests and monks do not grow proud”. He warns his followers not to take Jews and Christians as allies “they are allies of one another”.

More worryingly, he uses them to tell his followers that making friends with unbelievers is sinful and will be punished: “You will witness many of them [people of the Book] making friends with unbelievers – wretched is what their souls have laid in store for them!”.

He also tells his followers to have nothing to do with “those who divide their religion and turn themselves into sects“. He would probably be disappointed to find that the Sunni/Shia split apparently occurred only a few years after his death.

The core rule about food is pretty simple: everything is ok except for “carrion, blood, the flesh of swine”, though in it’s fuller version also forbidden is “that which is consecrated to other than God; also the flesh of animals strangled, killed violently [not sure how any method of slaughter isn’t violent], killed by a fall, gored to death, mangled by wild beasts – except what you ritually sacrifice – or sacrificed to idols.” Anything from the sea is allowed – interesting as the sea is over 300 miles from Mecca so it must have been preserved – but game on land is not allowed “as long as you are in a state of sanctity”. It’s not explained what that means. There’s nothing specific about ritual slaughter. Maybe it’s seen as a way to ensure the “don’t eat blood” rule is met, though I’d be surprised if ritually-slaughtered meat contains any less blood than any other sort. And he doesn’t offer any reason for any of the rules – maybe some or all of them were already being observed.

While the main rules about food are in “The Table”, in “Cattle” he adds “…do not eat food upon which God’s name has not been mentioned, for this is an offence.” Presumably that’s the basis for rendering food Halal by saying a prayer over it.

His explanation for the greater stringency of Jewish dietary laws is that this is how God “requited them for their sins” – a sort of collective punishment. In reality the Jewish rules are hugely complicated. But he simply says: “Upon Jews We [God] forbade all animals with claws. As for cattle and sheep, We forbade them their fats except for the fat on their backs, or entrails or what is mixed with bone.” Even assuming these are additional to the Qur’anic rules, not only is that incomplete – fair enough – but on the face of it, it’s wrong. There’s nothing about “animals with claws”. Seafood maybe? But the actual prohibition is fish that don’t have both fins and scales. And the actual rule on fat just excludes parts of the abdominal fat of cattle, goats and sheep, not everything except the fat on their backs. More to suggest that he didn’t know very much about Jewish or Christian theology.

The “Cattle” chapter takes its name from a set of verses where the author has a go at a set of “false” religious rules to do with cattle. These rules include how cattle are to be shared out and who can eat what. And he claims that whoever advocated them were also relaxed about infanticide. He contrasts these practices with his view that food is there to be eaten “Eat from what God bestowed upon you…” provided it remains inside what he considers his simple dietary rules. It sounds like these rival rules came from someone who had a rival claim to the word of God: “What greater sinner than he who…fabricates lies from God in order to mislead people?” and is one example of a wider issue: he’s deeply frustrated by people’s unwillingness to accept his teaching.

One of the interesting things about “Cattle” is the insight it gives into the arguments of people he’s trying to persuade. Some of them have a humanistic view of life: “There is nothing but this one present life, and we shall not be resurrected.” His answer is effectively Pascal’s Wager: if you take that line, it will be too late when you’re confronted by the truth of God. “Those who take their religion for amusement and frivolity, those whom the present life has beguiled..shall have boiling water to drink and painful torment…”.

Some mock him and claim it’s all just “fables of the ancients”. He cheers himself up by remembering that “messengers before [you] were mocked”. Even if God had personally “inscribed on parchment” he says sceptics would simply have claimed it was “sorcery” and demanded something more convincing. In the absence of miracles, he uses God’s historical tests and punishments to argue his case: He [God] had made previous generations powerful and then “wiped them out because of their sins.” He had “sent messengers to nations before you and …inflicted upon them famine and hardship that they may abase themselves. If only they had abased themselves when Our calamity struck!” This is not the God of Love.

Having said that, he’s clear that only God, not man, punishes unbelievers: “Say: ‘I stand upon a manifest proof from my Lord and you have pronounced it false. I have no authority over what you seek to quicken. Judgement lies solely with God…”. He simply advises his followers not to get into debates about it: “When you see those who wade in and argue about our revelations, turn away from them until they wade into some other topic.”

Similarly, he doesn’t say anything too strong against apostates: “O believers, whoso among you shall apostatise from his religion, let him know that God will bring forth a people whom he loves and who love Him, humble towards the believers but might against the unbelievers…” I think there’s an ambiguity here: “believers” may cover Jews and Christians as well as his own followers, as we know he considers them all “Muslims”. One thing is clear though, there’s no injunction here to kill unbelievers, unless they are actual enemies in war.

Finally, let’s talk about Jinn. According to a note by the translator, Jinn are “Invisible spirits but, like humans, responsible moral beings.” Presumably they were among the normal supernatural beliefs of the time and the Qur’an’s author didn’t question their existence. Instead he incorporates them, firstly by criticising people who claim that Jinn are “partners” of God, even though “He created them”, and then by criticising both bad Jinn and their human friends: “O tribes of Jinn [clearly there are a lot of them], you have indeed seduced many humans”. If humans defend these bad Jinn, both end up in the Fire, “sinners befriend one another”. It sounds like there are also good Jinn, as all will, like humans, be subject to judgement on Judgement Day.

I wonder whether there’s a clever scholarly interpretation to get rid of the embarrassment of Jinn?

A note on who’s speaking: these and previous chapters contain a mix of 1st person “We…” (meaning God) – in some cases in the form of an instruction: “Say: [something God wants to be said]” – and 3rd person: “God said….” or “He it is who…”. It’s almost as if the author sometimes forgets.

Qur’an 3: Was Muhammed a feminist?

I’m a British humanist reading The Qur’an (Tarif Khalidi’s translation) and blogging about it as I go. I’m doing my best not to make assumptions, apart from assuming it was written – not necessarily in the order given – by a man (or men) in Arabia in the 7th century. I realise that some Muslims will consider the whole exercise blasphemous, and some anti-theists will say it’s not critical enough. The aim is not to be offensive, but simply to share a personal, non-scholarly, view of one of the most influential texts of our time. [More…]

Chapter 4: “Women”. Getting used to the jumble of topics in each chapter now. This one has a focus on women, but also covers apostasy, male homosexuality and a lot of other items.

It’s clear that the author (or authors) lived in a society that took for granted that men and women are not equal. In common with most men, and presumably many women, in most parts of the world up until the 20th century, it probably never occurred to him to question that premise. It’s worth remembering that wives were legally their husbands’ possessions in England until late in the 19th century (and in Ireland until 1981).

Of course, our 21st century premise is that men and women are essentially equal, so it’s not surprising that some of his strictures are shocking. I’m no moral relativist: equality is better than inequality. But, for its time, the rules and guidance in this chapter may well have been a big advance in women’s rights. [Update: This academic article on Arab Women Before & After Islam indicates that, while women’s status and rights varied according to their tribe, it is incorrect to assume that the dawn of Islam marked an improvement over what was there before.]

Interestingly, he begins with a gender-neutral creation story “Fear your Lord who created you from a single soul and created from it its spouse, and propagated from both many men and women.” No mention of ribs.

There’s a lot of detail about inheritance. I knew the rule that “God commands you regarding your children: to the male what equals the share of two females”. But it gets more complex with various family compositions. Parents and siblings are also entitled to some inheritance.  And there are strictures about not spending money on yourself that has been entrusted to you for orphans.

Women have a right to their own earnings: “Men have a share of what they earned and women have a share of what they earned”. And they have a degree of control over who inherits their wealth: “To you belongs half of what your wives leave, provided they have no children. If they have a child, your portion is a quarter of what they leave, after deducting any bequests they have made or debts.”

For a man to prove that his wife has committed adultery, he needs four male witnesses. (How likely is that?) The punishment is to “confine them to their homes until death overtakes them or else God provides another way for them” (It’s tempting to speculate what that means – probably not good for the wife.) There’s nothing here about stoning to death, maybe that comes later, and nothing about the other man.

It’s then a big surprise to read in the same section: “And if two males among you commit indecency, rebuke them harshly. If they repent and make amends, leave them alone.” Wow! Male homosexuality is bad, but not that bad. (I can sense an inconsistency coming up….)

There’s a long list of the women who are “forbidden to you”, not only the obvious ones – mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, nieces – but also: wet nurses, “milk sisters”, mothers of your wives, step-daughters where you’ve consummated marriage with their mothers (otherwise it’s ok), “legal” wives of your sons (implying that there are “not legal” wives), your father’s wives (unless that was an “act that belongs to the past”) and sisters of your wives. You’re not allowed to “inherit” – presumably in the sense of ‘from their fathers…’- women against their will, nor to coerce them, provided they don’t cheat on you. “Live with them in kindness.”

Marriage is basically a financial contract: you must “use your wealth to contract legal marriage, not fornication.” (Ah, that’s where the non-legal variety comes from.) If you can’t afford to marry “free, chaste and believing women”, then you’re allowed female slaves who are “believing maidens”, provided you get their owner’s consent. You then “render them their dowries in kindness” and treat them as legal wives, “not lovers or prostitutes”.

Sustaining polygamous marriage can’t be easy. However hard you try he warns “you will not be able to act equitably with your women”, but you must do your best not to leave one of your wives in limbo. If you really go off one of them, be careful: “perhaps you may loathe something in which God places abundant good.” If you decide to “substitute” her with another wife, then you’re not allowed to take back any “riches” you’ve given her. And “if a wife fears antipathy or aversion from her husband, no blame attaches to them both if they arrive at an amicable settlement between them: such a settlement is best.”

If you’re worried that someone’s marriage is in trouble, then “send forth an arbiter” from each of their families in the hope there can be a reconciliation.

But, the premise of God-given male dominance eventually leads to a very worrying conclusion: “Men are legally responsible for women, inasmuch as God has preferred some over others in bounty, and because of what they spend from their wealth. Thus virtuous women are obedient, and preserve their trusts, such as God wishes them to be preserved. And those you fear may rebel, admonish, and abandon them in their beds, and smack them. If they obey you, seek no other way against them.” A degree of violence against women is ok with God.

Taking the text so far at face value, it encourages kindness and fairness in marriage, and acknowledges that women have property of their own, but it also sanctions hitting disobedient wives and the need for wives always to be sexually available (ref Chapter 2). Women have some rights, but limited say.

The assumption throughout this section is that the normal marriage is polygamous. That would imply a lot of ‘spare’ men. At the same time, the inheritance rules emphasise what happens when a man dies. I wonder if it worked that way because so many men were killed in battle? On the other hand, presumably a lot of women died in childbirth.

Alongside the verses on women and marriage, and the injunctions against unbelievers, the some other important points emerge from the jumble:

• The author urges honesty in business dealings, justice, fairness – even if you have to bear witness against yourself or your family – and kindness, not only to wives, but also to parents, relatives, orphans, the needy, neighbours – whether related or not – friends, travellers and slaves. “God loves not the swaggering and the conceited” and He “wrongs no-one” (I guess eternal flames for unbelievers and blasphemers – “whenever their skins are charred, We replace them with new skins” – doesn’t count).
• He’s clear that his own authority is God-given “O believers, obey God and obey the Prophet and those set in authority over you.”
• And he also sees differences in wealth as God-given: “Covet not that by which God preferred some of you over others in bounty.”
• Here’s a surprise: I thought the abrogation loophole was introduced in Chapter 2 to deal with inconsistencies. But here we have: “Do they not ponder the Qur’an? Had it been from other than God, they would have found much inconsistency therein.” The proof for the divinity of the text is it’s consistency. 

He covers apostates but in the rather special sense of the Hypocrites – the group who were refusing to follow his military leadership. It seems they’re repeat offenders: “Those who believed then disbelieved then believed then disbelieved, then increased in disbelief – God shall not forgive them nor guide them upon the way. Give tidings to the Hypocrites that a painful torment awaits them.”

Where he urges his followers to kill Hypocrites, it’s only when they insist on actually fighting against his forces. Even if they blaspheme, all that believers are supposed to do is move away till they change the subject: “..if you hear the verses of God blasphemed or mocked, do not sit with them until they broach another subject…God shall herd all Hypocrites and blasphemers into hell.”

There’s no edict here to kill apostates or blasphemers. Punishment lies with God. Maybe the draconian “hudud” punishments come in a later chapter.

There’s no way Muhammed can be described as a feminist in modern terms. But in 7th century Arabian terms, he seems to have been be pushing things in the right direction. If the text is taken literally and applied now, it’s pretty awful. But if the direction of travel is the main thing, then maybe it’s not so bad.

 

 

 

Qur’an 2: Surprise: the Apostles were Muslims

I’m a British humanist reading The Qur’an (Tarif Khalidi’s translation) and blogging about it as I go. I’m doing my best not to make assumptions, apart from assuming it was written – not necessarily in the order given – by a man (or men) in Arabia in the 7th century. I realise that some Muslims will consider the whole exercise blasphemous, and some anti-theists will say it’s not critical enough. The aim is not to be offensive, but simply to share a personal, non-scholarly, view of one of the most influential texts of our time. [More…]

Chapter Three “The House of Imran”.

Let’s start with some good stuff. If you want to go to heaven, the author says you must: be pious; restrain anger; pardon people’s offences; ask others for forgiveness if you make a mistake, and avoid stubbornly carrying on doing something knowing it’s not working out. And you mustn’t be miserly.

I guess most people would be happy with that as a non-exclusive list – apart from the “pious” bit. All the rest are applications of the Golden Rule.

The eponymous “Imran” is apparently Jesus’s grandfather, Mary’s father: “God chose Adam and Noah, the House of Abraham and the House of Imran above all mankind: a progeny one from another”. There’s a lot in this chapter about Christianity – though not necessarily Christianity as we know it.

But first he attempts to sort out the problem of competing interpretations of the Qur’an.

He says that some verses are precise – these are “the very heart of the Book” – and some are “ambiguous”. People who focus on the ambiguity and try to “unravel its interpretation” are wayward, as only God knows the correct interpretation.

As the whole Qur’an is claimed to be a revelation from God, it seems strange that He put in anything ambiguous in the first place, especially as He then says (via the author) it’s wrong to try to understand it. It implies that readers should focus on the parts of the Qur’an that are clear and precise – they don’t need any interpretation – and ignore the ambiguous verses. Anyone who claims to know what they mean is second-guessing God. Doesn’t that put a lot of scholars out of business?

Anyhow, on to Christianity…

It seems that the author thinks that Judaism and Christianity are more or less a single religion; that the Qur’an is a continuation of the same series of revelations as the Jewish Torah and the “Evangel” (the Christian gospel), collectively referred to as “The Book”; that that religion is all about surrendering to the One God, aka “Islam”; and that those who follow it are called “Muslims”.

He complains that the People of the Book argue foolishly about whether Abraham was a Jew or a Christian when actually he was neither, since “the Torah and the Evangel were revealed only after his time” making Abraham “a man of pristine faith, a Muslim…”. And when Jesus “detected unbelief” among his supporters, his Apostles replied “We…believe in God. Witness that we are Muslims….”. “The right religion with God is Islam.”

One thing is for sure: as far as the author of the Qur’an is concerned, his God and that of the Jews and Christians is the same.

He says that Imran’s wife, Mary’s mother, dedicated the new-born Mary to God, so preparing the ground for the Virgin Birth, which was apparently an easy task for God, as he’d already created Adam “from dust”. He also includes a story about Jesus as a child making a clay bird which then comes to life. Apart from the Virgin Birth, this material isn’t in the New Testament (aka “Evangel”) at all, but comes from gospels that didn’t make it through the selection process, a process that had been completed over 200 years earlier.

(By the way, Imran’s wife isn’t named in the Qur’an. Apparently she’s called ‘Hannah’ in Muslim tradition and ‘St.Anne’ by Catholics, who call Imran ‘St.Joachim’. Catholic doctrine is that Mary’s conception took place in the normal way but was “Immaculate”, meaning she was born without original sin. Hmm…)

But there are bigger differences between Christianity as we know it and what we hear from the Qur’an’s author.

I already knew that Islam views Jesus as ‘just another prophet‘, with no special ‘Son of God’ status. The author indeed says again that God does not “distinguish between any” of the prophets from Moses to Jesus, or the author. But it was a bit of a surprise to see Jesus referred to specifically as “a messenger to the Children of Israel” and “Christ”.

According to verses at the end of the next chapter (no, the ordering isn’t logical) the crucifixion and resurrection didn’t really happen. The Jews who claimed they “killed Christ Jesus, son of Mary, the messenger of God” had got it wrong. “They killed him not nor did they crucify him, but so it was made to appear to them.” Instead “God raised him up to him”.
The penalty for those Jews who got it wrong was that God “…forbade them certain delectable foods which had been made licit to them” – it doesn’t say what the foods were – a pretty minor penalty compared to any who slipped into usury and disbelief, who were sent to the flames.

And he rejects the doctrine of the Trinity, as God is One: “O people of the Book, do not be excessive in your religion”, but stick to “the truth”, which means, in the case of Jesus, “do not say ‘Three!’..God in Truth is One…”. But it’s not clear who he thinks the “Three” – the Trinity – are. He mentions Jesus, Mary and “a spirit”, and there’s no mention of “Father, Son and Holy Ghost”.

I’m no theologian, but to judge from this chapter, the author didn’t know much about Christian theology.

Instead he keeps coming back to the common ground of the People of the Book and how many of them have gone astray. Better, he says, to “Bring the Torah and recite if you are sincere….God has spoken the truth. So follow the religion of Abraham…”, while dissenters who turn away from revelation’s “manifest signs” head for “terrible torment” on the Day of Resurrection.

The “manifest signs” are obvious to “people possessed of minds”. They include the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the rotation of night and day. “…you [God] did not create all this in vain”. This is the 7th century version of the ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ argument.

Alongside the theology, he talks about war, with verses about battle, retreat and the “Hypocrites” who challenge Muhammed’s military leadership. The Qur’an doesn’t seem to do history or narrative. There’s a reference to a battle at “Badr” – a victory over the Meccans against the odds according to my translation. But there’s no description of this or any other military engagement, or explanation of what the fighting was about, apart from the enemy being “unbelievers”.

Military failure is down to human weakness, failure to support Muhammed as leader, or Satan causing people to run away from the battle. Success is down to God, who tests his troops from time to time and forgives them if appropriate. There’s some important stuff about life and death…

There’s no need to worry about getting killed in battle, whatever the odds, because God is on your side and anyone killed “in the path of God” is not really dead but “alive with the Lord” and looking forward to meeting up again with those who will follow.

There’s a general injunction against getting too infatuated with your present life and material things. Instead being with God is the “fairest homecoming” and “…this present life is but the rapture of delusion”. If you’re a believer, the Afterlife will be better than this one for sure.

In any case: “A soul cannot die save by God’s leave, at a date to be determined”. On the face of it, that doesn’t forbid suicide – the traditional Muslim teaching – but implies that success or failure of a suicide attempt is pre-determined by God.

Scattered among the theological and military verses are the usual warnings about unbelievers and blasphemers going to hell. As far as I can see, there are four categories of unbeliever:

• Actual enemies who you’re fighting.
• Unbelievers who are potential allies. The advice is not to adopt them as allies in preference to believers.
• Those People of the Book, apparently “most”, who fall short in their belief. “They shall not harm you but are merely a little nuisance”.
• A final category covered by the injunction not to “adopt as intimate friends those outside your circle” as they will “do all in their power to corrupt you and long to do you harm” as they only pretend to believe.
  I guess it’s only human for a new, embattled movement – or any threatened religious or racial minority – to fear “The Other”. But it’s an unhelpful idea applied out of context to a modern, plural society. 

Near the end of the chapter there’s this verse:

“I disregard not the works of any who works among you, be they male or female, the one is like the other”.

That’s an interesting prelude to the next chapter “Women”….

Qur’an 1: Moses & The Cow

I’m a British humanist reading The Qur’an (Tarif Khalidi’s translation) and blogging about it as I go. I’m doing my best not to make assumptions, apart from assuming it was written – not necessarily in the order given – by a man (or men) in Arabia in the 7th century. I realise that some Muslims will consider the whole exercise blasphemous, and some anti-theists will say it’s not critical enough. The aim is not to be offensive, but simply to share a personal, non-scholarly, view of one of the most influential texts of our time. [More…]

It’s a start – about a twelfth of the way in, and one of the longest chapters: The Cow. There are some surprises here, but what’s most interesting is the impression of the seventh century authorial voice. But more of that in a minute.

The Cow is a jumble: what believers are supposed to believe in; why it’s a bad idea to be a blasphemer or unbeliever (multiple times); God knows everything (and can demonstrate it); death and the afterlife; how to be virtuous; Abraham, the Children of Israel and Jesus; how God will test you; abrogation; the direction of prayer; the haj; what you can’t eat; wine and gambling; usury; fighting, aggression and retaliation; fasting in Ramadan; menstruation and sex; provision for your wives, and rights over them; divorce and re-marriage; use of wet nurses; resurrection; charity and kindness; loans and commercial contracts.  Along with the many injunctions there’s the occasional parable, a few prayers and the odd thing that I can’t make sense of.

It’s called “The Cow” because of a parable about Moses telling his people that God wants them to slaughter a cow. They object and it takes him three attempts, each with more details about the cow’s specification, before they do it.

The writer comes over as an anxious leader fighting backsliding among his followers. The story of The Cow, and the fact that it’s chosen as the title, fits alongside constant reminders of the eternal fire that awaits unbelievers in the Afterlife.

At the same time, he (and it’s definitely a “he” writing for other men) is both explaining what he thinks a virtuous life looks like, positioning himself alongside the Jewish prophets and Jesus, and providing detailed rules for living.

Presumably these rules are to address practical issues he’s encountering in the real world. For example, he says “Abandon what remains of usury” and accepts that wine (literally it’s just “wine”) and gambling have their benefits, but on balance they’re sinful. He’s obviously a businessman who’s keen to get his people to have clear (ideally written) contracts and abide by them.

He seems to be living in a society with no legal system and no state. For the time, his policies were probably very advanced.

There’s some good stuff. “There is no compulsion in religion” comes with no qualifications, apart from a reminder that “unbelievers abide in the fire for ever” (which I guess won’t worry them if they really don’t believe).

Fighting aggressors is a must, “but do not commit aggression”. You must be kind to “parents, kinsmen, orphans and the poor” and “speak kindly” to people. There’s strong emphasis on the importance of charity and extra credit for not showing off your wealth and generosity. “A kind word followed by magnanimity is better than charity followed by rudeness”, so be respectful to the people you’re giving to.

A man must make provision for his wives in case he dies (“maintenance for a year and no eviction”), wealth must be left to “parents and close relatives impartially” and divorce settlements must be fair.

Even the rule for retaliation for killing is intended to “save lives” by ensuring it’s proportionate, “a free man for a free man, a slave for a slave, a female for a female”, much like the “eye for an eye” rule in the Old Testament, and further evidence of a society with no rule of law.

There’s nothing in The Cow to suggest that believers should be punish unbelievers. “…God will deal with them on your behalf.”

But there’s also misogyny. Top of the list  is “Your women are your sowing field; approach your field whenever you please.”

The only exception is when women are menstruating, though once they’re “clean”, you can “approach them from where God ordered you”. So marital rape is ok and sex is just for the husband’s benefit.

If two men aren’t available to witness a contact, you need a man and two women so that “if one woman forgets, the one will remind the other”. Dippy.

While these attitudes would probably be unremarkable among men in 19th century Britain, they’re obviously repugnant to us now. Unfortunately, the injunctions are so clear-cut that it’s hard to see how they could credibly be brought into line with gender equality even with the most benign interpretation.

The God of the Qur’an is more the angry deity of the Old Testament than the God of Love. For those who die as unbelievers “…torment shall not be lessened, nor shall any defence be accepted from them. Your God is one God. There is no God but He, merciful to all, compassionate to each” – provided you’re not an unbeliever. And if you’re a believer: “we shall be testing you with some fear and famine, with loss of wealth, lives and crops”. So that’s the Problem of Suffering sorted out.

And then there are some surprises…

• He’s critical of “unlettered folk who understand scripture only as false hopes. But they are living an illusion.” Traditionally, Mohammed himself is understood to be illiterate. But clearly he considered himself intellectually superior to these “unlettered folk”, and the impression is that he was relatively well-off. It looks like the writer of the Qur’an was, in our terms, middle class.
• As well as overt unbelievers, and those who falsely claimed to be believers, he was up against “those who write scripture with their own hands and then claim it to be from God [i.e. via me], that they may sell it for a small price.” Setting aside the question of what is “real”, the fact that forgery was so prevalent that it’s covered in the Qu’ran isn’t encouraging when considering the reliability of the thousands of alleged sayings of the Prophet (Hadiths) and biographical writings (al-Sira), all of which were written down much later.
• As well as counting followers of Judaism and Christianity who lead righteous lives as “believers”, he emphasises that God’s revelations to Abraham, Moses, Jesus and other Jewish prophets are on a par with his own. He says (pp God): “We make no distinction between any of his messengers,” and “Who can wilfully abandon the religion of Abraham unless it be a one who makes a fool of himself?” Maybe the writer of the Qur’an didn’t set out to establish a separate religion at all, but rather a development of the types of Judaism and Christianity that existed in the area? If so, perhaps Muslims should regard revelations claimed in the Bible with the same reverence as those in the Qur’an.
• He reaffirms the “covenant” between God and the Children of Israel: “…remember, I preferred you above all mankind”. This applies to all descendants of Abraham except for “evildoers”. This is pretty remarkable given today’s level of anti-Semitism in the Middle East. But he also says (pp God) “…We have appointed you [presumably his own Arab tribe] as a median nation to be witnesses for mankind and the Prophet to be a witness for you”. Do their descendants, like the Children of Israel, have some sort of special status vis-a-vis the deity?

At the start of The Cow there’s a list of what believers believe in. Later on there’s a definition of virtue which starts with another belief list. They’re different. For example, there’s no mention of the afterlife in the virtues list, and no mention of “the Book” in the initial list. Of course, maybe he simply missed items from both lists, but still they’re apparently inconsistent.

The way out of inconsistency is abrogation and there’s a verse on that half way through The Cow that says “For every verse we abrogate or cause to be forgotten, we bring down one better or similar”. The fact that it’s there, near the beginning of the whole book, can only be to cope with inconsistencies that come later. That fits with the belief that the order of the verses isn’t the order in which they were written or recited.

It also fits with the fact that The Cow isn’t the first chapter, although it starts “Behold the Book”. Chapter 1 is “The Opening” – a short prayer. The editor, or editorial team, must have decided to put up it up front.

On to Chapter 3….

 

 

Why I’m going to read the Qur’an

Around one in four of the people on the planet, including 2.7 million Britons (and one in eight of my fellow Londoners) identify as Muslim. There is huge variety within Islam and between individual Muslims, but one thing everyone agrees on is the primacy of the Qur’an.

Like it or not, this 7th century work is one of the most important texts of our time.

But is it the hate-filled book that some on the Far Right would like to see banned, or is it about mercy and compassion, as many Muslim commentators claim?  Or a bit of both?

I’m a humanist and a secularist. I think there should be a level playing field when it comes to religion and belief, where everyone is free to believe and practice what they like – provided it doesn’t affect the rights and freedoms of others – where the State is neutral, and where no religion or belief group has special privilege. Half the people in Britain now say they’re non-religious – and that includes a number of ex-Muslims – while forms of faith that are more fervent than traditional Anglicanism, including most varieties of Islam, make up an important share of the remainder. Making that work peacefully is a challenge. Humanising “The Other” by getting to know people is probably the most important thing we can do to help. But so is separating fact from myth and prejudice. So I’ve decided it’s time to read the Qur’an.

I expect to find: not much in the way of narrative, repetition, things that don’t make sense to me, contradictions, things I find pretty offensive, especially about unbelievers, women and homosexuality, and things that help me understand why Muslims consider it inspirational (as well as a translation can).

While there is some dispute about the history of early Islam, as a humanist I’m 99.99% confident that the Quran is a human creation and was not dictated by an angel called Gabriel. I know what the traditional view is, but apart from the fact that it originated somewhere in Arabia in the 7^th century, I don’t know for sure who actually originated it, or who set the apparently non-chronological order of the verses, or whether the differences between the original versions and the version we have now really were as minor as they are claimed to be, or why a text supposedly delivered from God isn’t perfectly clear and consistent in its meaning.

But what matters is the text as it exists, along with the narrative about it, whether or not they’re historically accurate.

The mainstream Muslim view seems to be that, to gain a correct understanding of the Quran, you have to have a scholarly understanding of the language and the context in which each section was created. Contradictions are overcome by the rules of abrogation – some chronologically later verses trumping earlier ones – and, in some schools, by claimed sayings of Mohammed (Hadiths) trumping Qur’anic verses.

I’m aware that a massive literature of interpretation has been built up over the centuries, and it’s still going on. Attempts to give benign interpretations to sections of the text that clash with 21^st values are, of course, very welcome. But who is to say which interpretation is “true”? Literalists such as the Salafis – including IS – don’t have that problem, but then find themselves, and those they interact with, stuck with unvarnished views from 7^th century Arabia. A more pragmatic view is taken by some progressive Muslims, who believe the text is divinely inspired, but recognise that Mohammed was human and a man of his time, so the text cannot be considered perfect. In their view, it’s a starting point, not a finishing point.

I’m not an academic and am not going to put in unlimited time. So all I can do is read the text as I find it and accept that there will be things I fail to understand, or misinterpret. If I have the energy, I can find more background on specific points later. But I do want to get through it.

In common with the majority of present-day Muslims, I don’t understand Arabic. Rather than struggle with a translation into old-fashioned, hard-to-read English, or one that came from a contentious position, I wanted one in modern English, done by a reputable objective academic. Having looked at the reviews, I’ve gone for the translation by Tarif Khalidi, first published in 2008.

In reading it, I’ll aim to adopt a positive attitude, looking for good stuff, as I know that I’ll tend to home in on things to be outraged about. So here goes. Watch this space to see how I get on….