An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 24: Featuring Fire Elementals, Weeping Angels, and Iggle-Piggle (okay, not the last one) (The Night Journey (al-Isra) 1-111)

The Night Journey (al-Isra) 1-111
Featuring Fire Elementals, Weeping Angels, and Iggle-Piggle (okay, not the last one).

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

The Night Journey (al-Isra) 1-20

“Immaculate is He who carried His servant on a journey by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque whose environs We have blessed, that We might show him some of Our signs. Indeed He is the All-hearing, the All-seeing.”

Although this surah begins with a verse that hints at the magical night journey of the title, enjoyed by the Prophet, the following verses deal more with familiar themes that the Qur’an is guidance for the faithful so that they get a good, rather than a bad afterlife. It’s nothing we haven’t already see countless times.

There is, however, an interesting glimpse that “We have attached every person’s omen to his neck, and We shall bring it out for him on the Day of Resurrection as a wide open book that he will encounter”; in other words, each person’s deeds and/or sins are carried with them.

The verses return to the idea of the punishment of individuals (with their “omens” around their necks) vs. communities. It’s not exactly comforting stuff. God says that “We do not punish [any community] until We have sent [it] an apostle”, so you’re safe until someone comes along and starts proselytising, which seems a good way to make apostles and prophets feared visitors. However, God has a rather defeatist and fatalistic view - “We command its affluent ones [to obey Allah]. But they commit transgression in it, and so the word becomes due against it, and We destroy it utterly”. Which makes me wonder – if you’re God and you can see all things, and you know in advance that no-one will listen to Your apostles … why bother? Because it’s not a new thing - “How many generations We have destroyed since Noah!” What’s that about doing the same thing and expecting different results being the definition of insanity?

The Night Journey 21-40

“Your Lord has decreed that you shall not worship anyone except Him, and [He has enjoined] kindness to parents. Should they reach old age at your side —one of them or both— do not say to them, ‘Fie!’ And do not chide them, but speak to them noble words.”

The Qur’an gives us some actual rules to follow, many of which are to do with property, money or charity in some form. There’s some stuff about being kind to your parents, particularly to look after them in their old age because they looked after you as a child. “Fie” is a translation of the Arabic “Uff”, a similar dismissive kind of noise, very onomatopoeic.

Let’s hope that the aged parents also followed the injunction not to kill unwanted children - “Do not kill your children for the fear of penury: We will provide for them and for you. Killing them is indeed a great iniquity.” Signs of a harsh existence there; also I wonder if this verse is used as a justification against abortion?

There’s some stuff about weights and measures, and of giving charitably, but also with balance. The Qur’an uses the poetic term to not “keep your hand chained to your neck, nor open it altogether”, i.e. don’t be a complete miser but also don’t give, or spend, everything that you have. Which again seems fairly sensible.

There’s a bit of equivocation about killing people too - “Do not kill a soul [whose life] Allah has made inviolable, except with due cause, and whoever is killed wrongfully, We have certainly given his heir an authority. But let him not commit any excess in killing, for he enjoys the support [of law]”. So don’t kill people, unless there’s due cause, and do it cleanly when you do (the “excess in killing” is interpreted to mean mutilations and the like).

The Night Journey 41-60

“They say, ‘What, when we have become bones and dust, shall we really be raised in a new creation?’”

I couldn’t find much to extract from this section, it’s mostly about how God sees all etc. etc. There’s some talk of the “hereafter” and how not everyone will believe that - “When you recite the Qurʾān, We draw between you and those who do not believe in the Hereafter a hidden curtain.”. So … God is making people not listen to the Prophet for … reasons.

Other snippets, we get a reference to Satan fomenting trouble - “Indeed Satan incites ill feeling between them, and Satan is indeed man’s manifest enemy”. Which makes me wonder why the previous verses didn’t also have Satan drawing the “hidden curtain” to hide God’s message, rather than God strangely working against Himself.

The other point of interest, as well as a reference to the Thalmud and his she-camel, is that “Certainly We gave some prophets an advantage over others, and We gave David the Psalms”. I don’t know, I wouldn’t class the Psalms as any kind of prophecy or revelation myself, but then I suppose I don’t believe in such things anyway.

The Night Journey 61-80

“When We said to the angels, ‘Prostrate before Adam,’ they [all] prostrated, but not Iblis: he said, ‘Shall I prostrate before someone whom You have created from clay?’”

This section starts with a short story concerning Iblis the Devil, and we’ve had this before. God commands the angels to kneel before Adam, but Iblis refuses to kneel before something made from clay. It’s not mentioned this time around, but Iblis considers his own creation from fire to be superior to an earth elemental.

Oddly, God banishes Iblis, but also seems to encourage him to do his worst, to go and try to tempt people - “Instigate whomever of them you can with your voice;and rally against them your cavalry and your infantry, and share with them in wealth and children, and make promises to them!’”. However, the Qur’an warns us that “Satan promises them nothing but delusion”.

There’s a segue from the false promises of the devil to the protection of God, particularly here concerning sea voyages, and how God can send storms or not. God also seems to be a Weeping Angel because the Qur’an warns us the “Do you feel secure that He will not send you back into it another time […] ?”

Finally we get a few specific dogmatic instructions, concerning prayer - “Maintain the prayer from the sun’s decline till the darkness of the night, and [observe particularly] the dawn recital. Indeed the dawn recital is attended [by angels]”. Angels present at dawn is a nice image. The “sun’s decline” apparently means from noon onwards; that’s a *lot* of praying.

The Night Journey 81-111

 “We send down in the Qurʾān that which is a cure and mercy for the faithful; and it increases the wrongdoers only in loss.”

Most of the rest of this chapter concerns itself with answering criticisms along the lines of why anyone should take the Qur’an seriously. “Because I said so” is essentially the answer you get, or rather, “Because Allah says so”. There’s a claim that it’s beyond any other book that could possibly be written – “Should all humans and jinn rally to bring the like of this Qurʾān, they will not bring the like of it, even if they assisted one another”, for which I beg to differ. I’d like to think that a divinely inspired perfect work would be a lot less repetitive, for one thing.

We also get some entertaining arguments attributed to some hypothetical doubters, requesting that the Prophet create a house of gold, or fly into the sky, or perform other miracles as proof. The correct answer, as given by God to the Prophet, is to point out that he’s only human. Such things are for Allah to do, or not do, as He wishes, not for humans to mess around with. In other words “I’m only the messenger”. And if anyone complains about the messenger being a mere human, “Had there been angels in the earth, walking around and residing [in it like humans do], We would have sent down to them from the heaven an angel as apostle”. A human apostle for humans.

“We have sent the Qurʾān in [discrete] parts so that you may read it to the people a little at a time, and We have sent it down piecemeal”. Which is a good excuse for why it’s written piecemeal, I guess.

There’s some reference back to Moses as a comparison, and finally there’s an interesting reference to “the Spirit”. “The Spirit is of the command of my Lord”; this sounds a lot like the Holy Spirit of Christianity. It’s not something I remember seeing before in the Qur’an so I wonder if it will crop up again.

Well, that’s the Night Journey. There’s a fair bit of concrete stuff to be going on here, although nothing, I don’t think, that’s not been seen before. It does fit with the “piecemeal” explanation though, and as I’ve mentioned before there’s a kind of cumulative build-up from the repetition that feels like gradually teasing out the underlying messages of the Qur’an (except for the burning parts, those are most definitely over-laying).