An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part Thirteen: An Assortment of Prophets, an Assortment of Dooms, and a Pretty Cool Fantasy Setting (The Elevations (al-A’raf) 1-100)

The Elevations (al-A’raf) 1-100
An Assortment of Prophets, an Assortment of Dooms, and a Pretty Cool Fantasy Setting.

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 Elevations (al-A’raf) 1-20

 “Certainly We created you, then We formed you, then We said to the angels, ‘Prostrate before Adam.’ So they [all] prostrated, but not Iblis: he was not among those who prostrated.”

Once again I have to admire the enigmatic chapter titles of the Qur’an; this one, according to the notes, refers to heights that separate the righteous from the sinners, although until I get to the relevant verses I can’t be sure if this is a metaphorical barrier, or a description of what is thought to be an actual geographic feature of the afterlife, or both at the same time (which would be a very Qur’anic concept). As usual the version of the Qur’an I’m using goes with the most prosaic of the translations from Arabic; other possible titles are “The Battlements, The Faculty of Discernment, The Heights, The Ramparts, Wall Between Heaven and Hell”. This latter recalls to mind Aldous Huxley’s “Doors of Perception” or Nikos Kazantzakis’ “The doors of Heaven and Hell are adjacent and identical”.

Anyway, this is an earlier Meccan surah, so I’m expecting less burning and more actual content. It’s another relatively long surah (206 verses), which is longer than the previous couple of surah. It’s my understanding that the Qur’an is traditionally arranged in descending length of the surah (as yet I’ve come across no good reason why it was done this particular way), so I can only guess that rather than the number of verses it must be either be done on absolute length (this has more verses than Cattle, but fewer words overall), or perhaps the division is looser than that.

Anyway, on to the meat.

This is another one of those surah that starts with a mysterious collection of characters – this time “alif, lam, mim” as before but also “sad”. One explanation, if one can call it that, that I found is that these are meant to be a reminder of the “raw materials” (ie the Arabic language) of which the Qur’an is formed and thus a challenge to anyone to make a more perfect record of God’s word. That sounds like one of those religious philosophical arguments that only makes sense if you want to believe it in the first place, because otherwise … huh?

The chapter proper starts with some admonishment from God to follow Him and only Him, because He has destroyed towns “in the night and during their mid-day nap” for disobedience, and the people cried out as they died “We have indeed been wrongdoers!”. Because you would. But wait, aren’t we told in Cattle that “This is because your Lord would never destroy the towns unjustly while their people were unaware”? I suppose the weasel words there are “unjustly” and “unaware” – the “justness” of Allah is kind of not up for question by the Qur’an, and perhaps it would be argued by apologists that these people had been warned earlier to mend their ways or expect a good smiting.

The more interesting part, though, gets into the Garden of Eden story as seen via Islam. God creates Adam and orders the angels to bow before him, only Iblis refuses because he has been created from fire and Adam from clay (so a fire elemental vs an earth elemental, although perhaps more properly an efreeti vs. an awakened clay golem, D&D fans). God tells Iblis “Begone! You are indeed among the degraded ones”, Iblis pleads to be kept alive “till the day they will be resurrected”, God relents but then Iblis gets all stroppy and promises to try to corrupt humanity at every turn. Iblis is more evidently the bad guy with his ill-feelings and jealousy that Satan was in the Bible.

This cluster of verses ends with God warning Adam and “his mate” (does Eve get a name in the Qur’an?) not to eat the fruit of a certain tree, and Iblis (now referred to as Satan) telling them they will become immortal if they do.

The Elevations 21-40

“O Children of Adam! We have certainly sent down to you garments to cover your nakedness, and for adornment. Yet the garment of Godwariness—that is the best.’ That is [one] of Allah’s signs, so that they may take admonition”

Interestingly the Islamic version of The Fall doesn’t put the blame on “the woman” – she and Adam are equally culpable in their disobedience. The concept of nakedness, or not, it even more confused here than it was in the Bible since the Qur’an on the one hand says that Satan is responsible for “stripping them of their garments to expose to them their nakedness” but on the other hand follows the Biblical tradition of having Adam and Mrs Adam suddenly become aware of their nakedness and “they began to stitch over themselves with the leaves of paradise”. There’s some metaphor here, though, about the “garment of Godwariness” which makes little sense to me.

The rest of this block is about how various transgressors, including whole nations, have been “consigned to the fire” because they have been tricked by Satan, and think that merely doing what has been done before is the right thing – a cunning way of getting rid of old normative customs in favour of the new religion being expounded here; the old ways were a trick of the devil.  I like how all the sinners in Hell try to blame one another and shift the greater punishment to others; like Iblis being more petty and jealous than the serpent and/or Satan in the Bible, the sinners are at least shown as behaving like petty and jealous people.

The Elevations 41-60

“The inhabitants of paradise will call out to the inmates of the Fire, ‘We found what our Lord promised us to be true; did you find what your Lord promised you to be true?’ ‘Yes,’ they will say. Then a caller will announce in their midst, ‘May Allah’s curse be on the wrongdoers!’”

Nice. So the people that get into Paradise can get to mock the people that end up in Hell. Which, given that they are supposed to righteous, seems kind of mean and vindictive. (Nelson Muntz: Ha! Ha!). There’s a bit more description on “The Elevations” which seem to be a kind of plateau (also described as a veil) where the souls who are destined either for heaven or hell get to wait. They can see heaven and hell on either side of the elevations where they get to either mock the people in hell or to be scared that they will end up there for their actions in life. What a particularly fiendish bit of psychological torture! I like the idea for a dramatic setting though.

We move on to Allah exhorting all of His deeds, in creating the sun, moon, stars etc, of bringing the weather and watering crops, and of bringing the night that covers the day like a veil. I’ve seen people take this line as showing how stupid the Qur’an is for getting it wrong, but it sounds like metaphor to me - Nyx, the Greek Goddess of Night has a cloak of night, and this is something that’s found its way into role-playing games; the goddess Xentha of Glorantha for example, and the cloak of night is a World of Warcraft item. This chapter has a lot of geeky associations!

The Elevations 61-80

“Do you consider it odd that a reminder from your Lord should come to you through a man from among yourselves, to warn you so that you may be Godwary and so that you may receive His mercy?”

This section is pretty interesting, and actually follows a coherent sequence of events, tied together with various linguistic repeats and motifs to give it a good poetic quality. It relates various times that a prophet of some kind has tried to warn the people in the name of God, and those who did not hear were destroyed.

It starts with Noah, bringing warnings from Allah and getting saved in the ark whilst others are killed. Then we hear of a land called Ad (or Aad), where a prophet called Hud tells them that they should worship only Allah. The “elite” tell him that “Indeed we see you to be in folly, and indeed we consider you to be a liar.’” And refuse to give up the worship that of their forefathers. The divine punishment in this case is vague – “Then We delivered him and those who were with him by a mercy from Us, and We rooted out those who denied Our signs and were not faithful” but I note that there is a surah called “Hud” so maybe we will get his story in more detail then.

Next we hear of a the land of Hamud and the prophet Salih who again tells the people to worship only Allah, and provides a she-camel as a kind of sacred animal to be left to graze where she wishes unmolested. Again the elites disbelieve him, and hamstring the she-camel, for which they are struck by an earthquake. The land of Hamud sounds interesting, with houses “hewn from the mountains” and “palaces in the plains”. Both stories of Ad and Hamud are new to me, not borrowings from the Bible as far as I can tell. The recurring motif where each prophet says “Do you think it strange that God should send a mortal man as a messenger” is a nice rhetorical touch too.

This bunch of verses ends with a reference to Lot which I guess we will get into in more detail next time. I can see an intriguing pattern here with different elemental destructions – water, Noah; fire, Lot; earth, Hamud, so maybe Ad has some kind of airy destruction?

The Elevations 81-100

“Those who impugned Shuʿayb became as if they had never lived there. Those who impugned Shuʿayb were themselves the losers”

Ah, it’s disappointing. Sodom is destroyed by a “rain of stones”, so there goes my neat elemental quadrat. Not that the name Sodom is used at all, but Lot’s town is cursed because “Indeed you come to men with desire instead of women! Rather you are a profligate lot”. Lot’s wife in the Qur’anic version doesn’t get turned to a pillar of salt, she just decides to stay behind. There’s no drunken incest either.

We then get another cautionary tale of Midian, and the prophet Shu’ayb. The sins of the Midianites? Fiddling their weights and measures, and what sounds like either banditry or preventing religious freedoms – “And do not lie in wait on every road to threaten and bar from the way of Allah those who have faith in Him”. The story is the same as before – the elites mock, and the town is struck by an earthquake using exactly the same words as with Hamud.

This block then takes these cautionary tales and draws warning from them – Allah will get you if you mock or disbelieve, at any time, even “at midday while they are playing around”. There you are, just messing about on your lunch break when BAM! Wrath of God. And of course, had these people believed, the text explains, then Allah would have given them blessing instead. What I’d like to see here: some examples of that side of things as well.