An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part Eight: We Regret to Inform You of a Humiliating Punishment (The Women (al-Nisa) 101-176)

The Women (al-Nisa) 101-176
We Regret to Inform You of a Humiliating Punishment.

Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Qur’an version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Qur’an, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post https://bit.ly/2ApLDy0

For the online Qur’an that I use, see here http://al-quran.info and http://quran.com

And now:

The Women (al-Nisa) 101-120

 “When you journey in the land, there is no sin upon you in shortening the prayers, if you fear that the faithless may trouble you; indeed the faithless are your manifest enemies.”

There are a lot of exceptions to rules based on practicalities in the Qur’an, it would seem. Here we get a repeat of the concept, seen before in The Cow I think, that recognises that a Muslim stopping to pray in a hostile location is at risk. In this case, the Prophet is told to set armed guards around a site of prayer surrounded by “faithless”.

There’s then yet more of that tedious repetition about people that Allah is going to burn, or give them “a humiliating punishment”, whatever that might be. This includes people who are a bit pretend-y in their faith, and people who commit a sin and then blame it on an innocent person. That’s a new one. The list really reads like it’s the Prophet trying to assert his authority over fractious followers. “See, God says you have to obey me or else, it’s written here.” “But you wrote that.” “Under God’s divine inspiration!”  It’s the same in Revelation.

There are a couple of interesting injunctions near the end of this section that highlight some cultural practices – Allah warns the reader not to “ascribe any partner” to Him, i.e., no polytheism, and we are told that “They invoke none but females besides Him”, which the footnotes tell me was because the various Arabic spirits were largely female, or had female names; also there is a warning against cutting the ears of your camel, which again the handy footnotes tell me was a pagan dedicative act of some kind.

I do love the circumspect language that the Qur’an sometimes uses. Whoever follows Satan, we are told, “has certainly incurred a manifest loss”. It’s an oddly polite contrast to all the talk about burning.

The Women 121-140

“It will be neither after your hopes nor the hopes of the People of the Book: whoever commits evil shall be requited for it, and he will not find for himself any guardian or helper besides Allah.”

The start of this section goes back to the kinds of people that get to live in the garden with the water feature, and interestingly here the Qur’an points out that the hopes of people, regardless of their affiliation (within Abrahamic faiths at least) are irrelevant. Men and women, however, are both eligible if they live righteous lives.  Possibly, though, the criteria for righteousness are different for the genders, although here it is said that all that is needed is submission to God, which even Abraham did.

Actually thinking about it, I’m not really sure what submission to God actually means in real terms. Abraham was told stuff directly by God and angels. In that sense he kind of has the edge over other people. So… without suffering from delusions, how is a person supposed to know? Technically I suppose, this book, but so far I’ve not got much from concerning submission, just some vague stuff about property law.

Next, some verses concerning women again, starting with girl orphans, which seems to be that if you want to marry them then the Qur’an demands that you pay them (their inheritance? That’s what the early verses were about). If a man and a woman want to split up its better for them to reconcile, and you will never “be able to be fair between wives” but you should try anyway. Ooorrr…and call me apostate here, perhaps not have multiple wives?

The verses then whiplash around to some repetitions of “To Allah belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth”, and the intriguing notion that “If He wishes, He will take you away, O mankind, and bring others [in your place]”. I wonder who these would be? What if … humans are the replacement for an earlier race that displeased Allah? And we kept finding remnants of these previous people. It’s at about this point that I begin constructing my fantasy setting based on inspiration from the Qur’an.

It’s like the Qur’an has to go off into a little chorus every few verses about how Allah is great and will burn you if you disagree, before coming back to some rules for a bit, then off into singing the praises and awe of Allah, then back to some guidelines, etc. Here, we get a verse that touches on giving fair testimony to all regardless of wealth or relationship to you. Then off on some more praising, and also a note to “Inform the hypocrites that there is a painful punishment for them”. Another one of those delightful Qur’anic understatements. “Excuse me, are you the hypocrites?” “Yes we are” “Sorry to have to say there’s a painful punishment for you” “What?!” “Don’t blame me, I’m just informing you as I was told”.

Finally, concerning hypocrites, the Qur’an advises believers not to talk to them about religion – “when you hear Allah’s signs being disbelieved and derided, do not sit with them until they engage in some other discourse, or else you [too] will be like them” – which doesn’t seem too confident in the Word of Allah to me. Surely it ought to be the other way around – talk to them about Allah and they’ll be immediately converted by the indisputable logic of your arguments. C’mon, de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace!

The Women 141-160
“The hypocrites indeed seek to deceive Allah, but it is He who outwits them. When they stand up for prayer, they stand up lazily, showing off to the people and not remembering Allah except a little,”

Allah might be all-knowing and all-merciful, but He really has it in for hypocrites (one assumes hypocrites as far as religion goes if for no other reason). Hypocrites get the “lowest level of the fire” and there is “no help for them”, but the verses also read that “whoever Allah leads astray”, implying that these people are hypocrites because Allah wills it. Which is odd, but also the kind of mental gymnastics you have to perform once you’ve stated that your god knows everything and controls everything. Either He doesn’t, and people can turn against him, or He does, but has to be kind of a tool by deliberately making people faithless so that they get eternally burned. It’s a bit like the old transporter problem in Star Trek. Once you’ve got that kind of technology, the writers then have to keep coming up with ways to limit it so that they can make certain stories.

After a little interlude whereby we are told not to speak of anyone’s wrongdoings unless we are the victim (a proscription against gossip), we get back to complaining about the faithlessness of Jews. Oh goody, that doesn’t get old quickly (sarcasm). There’s a little bit of biblical history here, and for once the Qur’an mostly seems to get it right.

The Israelites ask Moses for a sign, and get struck by a lightning bolt for their presumption. Then start worshipping the Golden Calf while Moses is up a mountain getting “a manifest authority”. However some broke the covenant and “killed the prophets”, of which apart from Jesus I don’t know who this means. And speaking of Jesus, the Jews get accused of killing Jesus, but are unaware that Allah took Jesus up to Heaven to be with Him. And for this kind for behaviour God “prohibited them certain good things that were permitted to them [earlier]”. He made them sit on the naughty step, in other words.

The Women 161-176

“We have indeed revealed to you as We revealed to Noah and the prophets after him, and [as] We revealed to Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, Jesus and Job, Jonah, Aaron, and Solomon, —and We gave David the Psalms—“

Here the Qur’an places itself in the tradition of the biblical revelations and makes plain that the revelations to the Prophet are of the same tradition of those listed (plus to the apostles as well, but that’s in the next verse that I didn’t quote). It also makes plain that Jesus was not God in human form –“ The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only an apostle of Allah, and His Word that He cast toward Mary and a spirit from Him. So have faith in Allah and His apostles, and do not say, ‘[God is] a trinity.’ Relinquish [such a creed]! That is better for you. Allah is but the One God. He is far too immaculate to have any son” – the first time really that the Christian faith is addressed in the Qur’an. In this, then, the Qur’an is similar to several early Christian sects, not least the Arians (popular amongst the Germanic tribes) that denied the divinity of Christ.

We also get mention of the “manifest light”, and the footnotes here are interesting as they demonstrate that there is disagreement among Muslim theologians about what the verse means – “The Qurʾān, according to Mujāhid, Qatādah and Suddī. The wilāyah of Imām ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (ʿa) according to traditions from Imām Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad al-Ṣādiq (ʿa) and Imām Muḥammad al-Bāqir (ʿa)”. I don’t know what the wilayah of Ali ben Ali Talib is, but I shall endeavour to find out. You’d kind of think that the Qur’an would trump all other writings, but there you go.

(Edit: I did a bit of very cursory research; a “wilayah” is an administrative district of a caliphate, but the wilāyah of Imām ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib is something a bit more spiritual, interpreted as being “stewardship” or even “friendship”, and seems to be the basis of the Shi’ite branch. Ali ben Abi Talib is the son in law of the Prophet, and as I recall there’s a successionary disagreement after the Prophet’s death – ironic given that this chapter is full of inheritance laws. This is probably something we’ll get more into as we go along).

The surah could end on verse 175, because we’ve wound down into the usual exhortations of how great Allah is, but the final verse is a sudden tacked on bit of legal ruling concerning the “kalalah”, which is an inheritance law when someone has no direct descendants, or ascendants (remember that inheritances can go upwards as well as down to ensure that you’re nice to your entire family). Which is an odd one to end on, like it was forgotten in the section where inheritance was discussed near the beginning. I’ve heard that not only are the surahs arranged in a non-chronological fashion, but so are the verses within the surah; not sure about the accuracy of this but it would make sense for the strange ending.

Phew. Surah 4, The Women/The Woman finished. Kind of like the previous ones again, a mix of laws and history and lots and lots of how great but burn-happy Allah is.