An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part Eleven: God’s Assault Course for Apostles, and Abraham Does Astronomy (Cattle (al-An’am) 1-100)

Cattle (al-An’am) 1-100
God’s Assault Course for Apostles, and Abraham Does Astronomy.

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:

Cattle (al-An’am) 1-20

“And they say, ‘Why has not an angel been sent down to him?’ Were We to send down an angel, the matter would surely be decided, and then they would not be granted any respite.””

We seem to be back to a cattle-based title for this surah, which is a bit disappointing given all the esoteric and evocative names of some of the upcoming surahs. Well, nothing to be done with that. This surah comes somewhere in the middle, time-wise, and according to the description on the website I use is named after the proscriptions against cattle-based offerings of the pagan Arabs.

Most of the first 20 verses are taken up with extolling the might of Allah – you’re probably familiar with this by now. Allah can send good or bad things to people, and can basically do what He likes by dint of being God. Surprisingly, nothing about burning.

There are some verses aimed at doubters, who seem pretty much pre-ordained to doubt. God says that if He sent an angel they would still doubt it, and for reasons known only to Allah decided to send His prophets as men rather than angels anyway. Convenient. It’s also written that doubters will consider a Book of the word of God as “just magic”. It’s unclear if this refers to the Qur’an alone or also includes the Torah and the Gospels; I guess it doesn’t matter.

The last verse in this chunk is interesting –“Those whom We have given the Book recognize him just as they recognize their sons. Those who have ruined their souls will not have faith”. The commentary says that this can be interpreted as the Prophet having been prophecised by the Jewish and Christian holy books. I wonder which verses are used to justify this? Is the intent meant that the Prophet is equivalent to Elijah or a Messiah?

Cattle 21-40

“Who is a greater wrongdoer than him who fabricates a lie against Allah, or denies His signs? Indeed the wrongdoers will not be felicitous.”

The bulk of this section speaks against polytheism, or “those who would ascribe a partner to Allah”. Mostly it is along the lines that polytheists will be sorry when they die and realise that they got it wrong, and are thus doomed to burn in the fire (I knew it would be in here somewhere). I’ve seen this kind of argument before, I’m not sure how well it works. Surely threatening someone with afterlife punishment only really works if they already follow our belief system? There is nothing inherently more convincing in the notion of eternal punishment after death as there is in notions of nothingness, rebirth or ancestor spirits.

The rest is mostly encouragement to the Prophet not to take it to heart if people don’t believe him, since previous “apostles” have also had to bear disbelief. There’s a strange verse that states “There is no animal on land, nor a bird that flies with its wings, but they are communities like yourselves”. I’m not sure what that means. Is it akin to the Christian notion of God seeing every sparrow that falls?

Cattle 41-60

“We do not send the apostles except as bearers of good news and warners. As for those who are faithful and righteous, they will have no fear, nor will they grieve.”

There’s a verse in this section that states “No leaf falls without His knowing it, nor is there a grain in the darkness of the earth, nor anything fresh or withered but it is in a manifest Book” which suggests that my interpretation of the verse about animal communities was correct.

The rest of this is a bit strange, concerning apostles. The text seems to imply that Allah sends out apostles, and then makes things tough for them to see if they “entreat” Him or not. If they don’t, then evidently Satan has taken over their “hearts”. Which seems like God just messing with people for the sake of it, again. The idea is to root out true believers, I guess. But then, why would an all-knowing God who “knows best what you do” not simply be able to look into a person’s heart and see, something that the Qur’an makes pretty plain that He can do on numerous occasions.

Cattle 61-80

“Then, when he saw the moon rising, he said, ‘This is my Lord!’ But when it set, he said, ‘Had my Lord not guided me, I would surely have been among the astray lot.’”

Most of this section is given over to admonishment of religious hypocrites and others who profess faith but are lacklustre in its expression. We’ve been here before, apart from the specific promise that such people will have boiling water to drink.

Of the most interest are the verses at the end of this section, wherein Abraham goes through a series of different object worshipping phases. After telling his father Azar not to worship idols, Abraham is shown the heavens by Allah. He starts by considering a star to be God, but realises that it goes away. Then the moon, but it sets, then the sun, which is bigger than the moon. But the sun sets as well, and Abraham comes to the conclusion that there must be one greater than all these celestial objects that created them in the first place. It’s a fun little bit of poetics.

Cattle 81-100

“It is He who made the stars for you, so that you may be guided by them in the darkness of land and sea. We have certainly elaborated the signs for a people who have knowledge.”

I quite like this section, there’s some good poetry in it. Much of it is basically enumerating the various creative acts ascribed to Allah, and also why – the stars for light at night and for navigation, the night for rest, the sun and moon for calculating time and so on. It comes down basically to the “Appeal to Trees” fallacy – that the existence of a creator deity is evident from the observation that things exist (and are impressive and/or beautiful) but it’s a nice piece of writing nonetheless, and the best writing in the Qur’an so far (less burning).

There are verses in this section that also list the various Biblical figures named as earlier apostles, including Moses, Noah, Jesus, Lot and so on. Also given is “Ilyas”, which I thought might have been an Arabicising of “Elijah”, but then the next verse gives “Elisha”, which is also an Elijah variant. Curious.