Category: Religion

Back when I was taking college elementary-education classes, my professors often liked prompting us to let our future students draft up their own classroom rules. The point of this was to give students a small sense of power and investment in the organization and welfare of their classrooms. The predicted hitch: children are rather draconian creatures on the topics of fairness and justice. We teachers-to-be were warned that we might be shocked at the strict standards our students –never once considering their likeliness to run afoul of their own rules– would set for themselves and the punishments they’d proscribe, and that we’d probably need to intercede and temper things out a bit. This is true of broader society as well: people are likely to be more comfortable with setting up and living in a world full of harsh rules and punishments as long as they think it’ll never apply to them.

The Quran sets up some harsh punishments for unbelievers. Today’s surah is going to be marred by some very vivid and cruel images of Hell. Their purpose is to scare the unbelievers and make them receptive to Muhammad’s guidance. The point of the Quran’s insistence upon Hell is to convince people that they really need to listen to the things that will get them to heaven. It is also a reminder to believers that their response to God is supposed to be gratitude for making the effort to guide them away from Hell. In the midst of the surah we’ll listen in to a prayer of Abraham’s (Ibrahim‘s) and observe the gratitude and grace of a man who knows God guides and listens to him.

Those who don’t expect to be punished often don’t stop to think about the harshness of the punishments they are backing. Yet these things reflect the proposed character of the God or world they believe in, and today’s surah shall stir some old questions about God as Islam sees Him.

Last week I followed the linear events of Surah Yusuf up until ayah 57. We saw Joseph guided by God through favorable and unfavorable seasons, ultimately leading to his appointment to a position in Pharaoh’s court. Throughout these times Joseph was sustained by divine inspiration from God that protected him from fear, sin, and doubt. That first half concluded with a two-ayat epilogue which connected Joseph’s worldly ascendancy with God’s promise to never neglect rewarding people’s goodness, and also gave a reminder that the after-life will provide the ultimate reward for those who hold the right beliefs and attitudes for God.

Although living out his earthly reward, Joseph still has two divine revelations to see fulfilled –one in which his family bows before him, and another in which he gets to indict his brothers of their sins. In this second half of the narrative, Joseph is going to become more active in God’s plan. Whereas before he survived trials while sustained by divine inspiration, now his divine inspiration is going to show up implicitly as he uses his new political power to bring God’s promises into fruition.

If I’ve complained about repetition in the last two suwar, Surah Yusuf is the answer. If I’ve ever complained about the scatterplot layout of material in the Quran, Surah Yusuf is the answer. Today’s surah deliberately and entirely focuses on a narrative telling of one person, Joseph (Yusuf) the son of Jacob. The first three ayat are almost endearing, as God winds Muhammad up by telling him that he is getting “the best of stories in what We have revealed to you.”

Now, the Biblical story of Joseph can be found in Genesis 37, 39-50. It has the benefit of luxurious length, fuller detail, and the context of its preceding history. From a literary standpoint I would call it the most narratively and emotionally satisfying story in the Bible. Surah Yusuf shares with the Genesis account the timeline points: dream of future ascendancy, betrayal by jealous brothers, enslavement in Egypt, jailed on false pretenses after rejecting attentions of his master’s wife, interprets dreams, gains place in Pharoah’s court for his wisdom and insight, tests brothers but ultimately refuses chance of avenging past wrongs, reunites and protects entire family. The details in almost every point are so different in the surah that the characters are quite changed in its telling. In my next two posts I am going to walk through the story blow-by-blow in order to think through those details.

I’d encourage you to read both accounts for yourselves. The surah is only 111 ayat and it’s shorter to read the surah itself than my analysis. One reason that I’m doing this blog is that I was tired of reading about the Quran and wanted to get direct with the materials. This blog is just my processing of those materials. That being said, I know by writing this that I’m just perpetuating the cycle of more people reading about the Quran and borrowing someone else’s opinions. I’m thankful that you’re reading my opinions! But I still would hope that you’re testing mine with your own.

Surah [of the Prophet] Hud (123 ayat long) has been a little bit of a stumbling block in my writing cycle. In here we find the same sequence of early prophets lined out in Surah al-A’raf, and which I glossed through in this post. This repetition means that I don’t have large quantities of new material to tell you. Because I know that not many of you are reading through the Quran yourselves, I cannot not summarize the bulk of today’s content. Thus I’ve been stuck trying to come up with content that is minimally redundant and yet thorough. On the plus side, this quandary has forced me to rest on this surah and look longer at it, which is one of the reasons why I find blogging my experiences with the Quran so useful. If I was just reading the book straight through by myself, I definitely would just glaze over this surah and push forward for something more drastically interesting. Having to develop a presentable opinion and impression brings me at least a little closer to the people who read this surah ritually over and over again and delve out meaning.

While al-A’raf skimped on the earlier prophets and spent most of its time on Moses, Hud will inverse the emphasis by glossing Moses’s account and telling more about the people before. This will provide us with more details and a few more themes, particularly about who is saved and how faith shapes relationships. As for general context, this surah comes from the Meccan phase and includes the basic Meccan themes: the perfectness of the Quran, the worship of The God, the reality of judgement, the pagans’ disbelief.

Surah al-Yunus, or The Chapter of Jonah, contains a total of *one* ayat about Jonah. I had thought this might happen when I set out to write my previous Jonah post, but maybe didn’t expect Jonah’s mention to be quite so brief. Most of this surah is spent in the ministries of Noah, Moses, and Muhammad. Jonah’s presence is striking though, and by the end of the surah we’ll recognize why his name gets top billing in this chapter.

I’m going to start off by saying that al-Yunus does not present us with very much new material to go through. It repeats many messages and stories from the prior suwar, and in particular it resembles al-An’am. They both were revealed during Muhammad’s fledgling ministry in Mecca where he faced strong rejection from the ruling tribe. Again here, the Quran consoles Muhammad by describing retribution towards his opposition, putting the burden of success or failure upon God’s will, supplying him with arguments, and likening his struggles with those of previous prophets. Today’s material is not going to add any new themes or material to our building knowledge of the Quran, but there will be occasional nuances and details to pick out as we go. Continue reading “Surah 10: Jonah” →

This is the first line of the Quran: “In the name of God, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful.” It is so universal a phrase in the Muslim world that it has a name: the basmala. When slaughtering animals, recite the basmala. When addressing official documents, write the basmala. Muslims are encouraged to embark upon every endeavor with the words of the basmala. It even has its own unicode symbol: ﷽. Yes, that is all one character according to a computer. Do yourself a favor and look up “basmala calligraphy” to see just how many beautiful ways that Muslims tribute the phrase artistically. The basmala is so beloved because it invokes God’s sanctuary and benevolence. It is the preamble or first line to every surah of the Quran.

Excepting Surah at-Tawba.

This is the only surah of the Quran that does not begin with an invocation of God’s mercy. While there are several explanations as to why it does not happen here, the common answer is that Surah at-Tawba is a declaration of war and wrath, not mercy. I still hold that it is far too early to declare that the Quran is a violent book, but this is definitely a violent chapter. Last week we looked at the hostile attention and actions it targeted at the people who habitually sin through shirk. Despite there being plenty to say about those people, most of the surah is actually addressed to believers and hypocrites. Today we’re going to examine the surah’s call to repentance within the Muslim’s own ranks.

Surah at-tawba, “The Repentence,” is one of the last revealed chapters of the Quran. Tradition holds that this surah was revealed nine years after Muhammad’s relocation to Medina. At that point, the Muslims had successfully conquered Mecca, destroyed the pagan idols surrounding the Ka’ba, and had allied together most of the Arabian peninsula. Yet Muhammad’s state still looked more like a loose confederation than a nation. Members were unified around Muhammad, but did not have a group identity. Many allied tribes were still non-Muslim, perhaps following Muhammad out of fear for the Muslim military, or to ride on Muslim successes, or for access to the all-significant Ka’ba. With such a dynamic, members less beholden to Muhammad posed a considerable risk, as they were likely to take opportunity of any foreign invasions or internal conflicts in order to release themselves from taxes or the suppression of their historical (pagan) culture. And so to these less-beholden people Surah at-Tawba draws the line: repent, or else.

The main threats to Muhammad’s authority are the munafiquun and the mushrikuun. I already covered the etymology of the munafiquun, “ones who tunnel,” (hypocrites) within this post. The word mushrikuun is usually translated as “polytheists” or “pagans” in the Quran, though it literally translates as “ones who associate.” The key roots are sh-r-k, which are harmless enough roots in other Arabic words but are most critically used in the name of the sin shirk, which means to associate anything with God. Today’s post will focus on the call to people who shirk, a category extending from the pagans to the Jews and the Christians.