An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 27: EmCee Pharoah and White Hand Moses Bring the Beef in an Epic Throwdown (Ta Ha)

Ta Ha (Ta-Ha) 1-135
EmCee Pharoah and White Hand Moses Bring the Beef in an Epic Throwdown.

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

Ta Ha (Ta-Ha) 1-20

“We did not send down to you the Qurʾān that you should be miserable”

You may well ask, what is “Ta Ha”? For one thing, it’s one of those mysterious sets of Arabic characters that begin certain chapters, “T. H.” basically. For another, apparently, it’s one of the names of the Prophet Mohammed. For which, I didn’t realise there are other names. There’s no explanation given that this means something in particular, the commentary leaves us hanging.

Although it looks temptingly like “Ta-da!”, it’s pronounced with long vowels, and an alternative rendering is “Taa Haa”.

Part of me is worried, given that even the surahs that are named after something that’s in them tend to meander around. This is named after the first verse, which is just two characters long. What on earth are we going to get?

The answer so far is God telling the Prophet His reasons for sending him the revelations of the Qur’an, as a warning and guide to others. Then we get a recounting of the story of Moses who sees a burning bush and at first is going to collect a burning brand from it, before the bush starts talking to him and tells him “Indeed I am your Lord! So take off your sandals. You are indeed in the sacred valley of Ṭuwā”.

Amusingly, the bush asks “‘Moses, what is that in your right hand?’”, which sounds like a teacher chiding a misbehaving schoolchild. But it’s Moses staff, which upon God’s command he casts down and it turns into a snake.

Ta-Ha 21-40

“Now clasp your hand to your armpit: it will emerge white, without any fault. [This is yet] another sign”

I’m impressed here, since the story of Moses is recounted pretty much faithfully to the Biblical version, rather than the somewhat Telephone Game version of some Biblical accounts we’ve had so far in the Qur’an. It’s told in very short verses, with God telling Moses that Pharaoh has “rebelled” and to go and have a word with him.  “Remove the hitch from my tongue” asks Moses; help me to speak clearly, and also please can my brother Aaron help. God allows this and talks about Moses’ early life, being sent away in a reed basket, found again and raised by his mother under the noses of his enemies. There’s even reference to when Moses kills a man and has to run away to the Midianites.

One thing I don’t recall, the quote above. I remember there being some underwhelming “miracle” about turning Moses’ hand white (I think it’s explained in terms of giving him and taking away leprosy in Exodus). Not the detail about him having to put it in his armpit, though. I think that makes it better.

Ta-Ha 41-60

“Go ahead, you and your brother, with My signs and do not flag in My remembrance”

God tells Moses and Aaron to go forward in all their beliefs, and to talk softly with Pharaoh to try to bring him back to righteousness. Which they do, and there’s a sudden jarring change in speaker where in one verse we have God speaking to Moses, and the next, suddenly we have “He said, ‘Who is your Lord, Moses?’” where “he” in this case would appear to be Pharaoh. To make matters worse, the next verse reads “He said, ‘Our Lord is He who gave everything its creation and then guided it’” where “he” is now Moses. I wonder if in the original Arabic the attributions of who is speaking is either more clear from grammar, or if it’s the other way and you have to guess from context.

Pharaoh asks if Moses is challenging him to a duel of magic, and proposes a time and place to meet magic for magic, which will take place on the “Day of Adornment”. These are all really short verses, you can zip through this surah really quickly.

Ta Ha 61-80

“They said, ‘These two are indeed magicians who intend to expel you from your land with their magic, and to abolish your excellent tradition!”

The day of the contest arrives. Pharaoh’s magicians “kept their confidential talks secret” – because what else would you do with something confidential? Turns out they’ve challenged him to a rap and breakdancing contest, because they say “ ‘O Moses! Either you will throw down, or we shall be the first to throw’”.

Moses tells them to throw down first, beeyatch, and “Behold, their ropes and staffs appeared to him by their magic to wriggle swiftly.” That’s some mysterious power, making a rope wriggle. How on earth did they do that? It’s enough to make Moses afraid, but God tells him to go ahead anyway and his staff will eat theirs. Which it apparently does, even though we don’t get told that it does, because the next thing we know the magicians are praising the God of Moses.

It reads at first like Moses is angry with them for worshipping God without his permission - “Do you profess faith in Him before I may permit you?” – but later context makes it clear that this is Pharaoh saying this. He even threatens to cut off opposite hands and feet and crucify the magicians to a date palm, but they decided that Allah is best anyway. We don’t get to hear what happens to them as next there’s a sudden whisk through further events in the life of Moses – crossing the Red Sea, manna and quails and the “tryst on the side of a mountain” with God. Brokeback Mountain?

Ta Ha 81-100

“‘Eat of the good things We have provided you, but do not overstep the bounds therein, lest My wrath should descend on you. And he on whom My wrath descends certainly perishes.”

These verses recount the story of the Golden Calf. Whilst Moses is having his tryst with God, God mentions to him that he might want to check out what’s going on back at camp, because “the Sāmirī has led them astray”.

He returns to find the people worshipping a Golden Calf, which they hilariously claim to have created by accident -“we were laden with the weight of the people’s ornaments, and we cast them [into the fire]”, and then Samiri turned the metal into the calf to worship. Moses confronts Aaron about why he didn’t stop things.

“O son of my mother! Do not hold my beard or my head!” says Aaron.  His excuse is feeble; he thought it was a test and didn’t want to say anything in case it caused a rift amongst the people. At least in this instance it isn’t Aaron who creates the calf in the first place, but instead this mysterious Samiri. His excuse for creating the calf is because of some vague divination method - “I took a handful [of dust] from the messenger’s trail and threw it”. Samiri is sent away with a curse – “Begone! It shall be your [lot] throughout life to say, “Do not touch me!”” which sounds lke he’s been given leprosy.

Ta Ha 101-120

“They question you concerning the mountains. Say, ‘My Lord will scatter them [like dust].’”

There’s a return now to more generic discussion  of the Qur’an and the Day of Judgement, when “the Trumpet” will be sounded, and people argue about if they’ve been “there” ten days or one day. I don’t know where “there” is supposed to be, it sounds a bit like Limbo or Purgatory; the point is only Allah knows for sure (like how many youths were in the cave).

There’s the usual kind of discussion about who gets punished and who gets rewarded – the suitably vague “whoever does righteous deeds”. Then the text discusses the Qur’an itself, with God saying that “We have paraphrased the threats in it” and warning the Prophet not to rush publication before it’s ready - “Do not hasten with the Qurʾān before its revelation is completed for you”.

Lastly the text jumps to Adam, using him as an example of someone that disobeyed God. I’m going to skip into the next bunch of verses slightly, because God tells Adam and “his mate” (still no name for Eve) that “Indeed you will neither be hungry in it nor naked”, “it” referring to the Garden of Eden. Iblis, who refuses to bow to Adam, tricks him into eating from the “tree of immortality” for which “their nakedness became evident to them”. So, wait … God tells Adam and Even that they “will not be naked” but then they discover that they are. So God lied to them? Also, in Genesis the Tree of Immortality is the tree that they don’t eat from, it’s the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

For one thing, that whole scenario doesn’t gibe with the later idea in the Bible that God *wants* mankind to have eternal life through Christ, but also more specific to the Qur’an, firstly Adam and Eve *don’t* become immortal, they become even more mortal, and why would immortality give you the knowledge that you were naked? Oops.

Ta Ha 121-135

“But whoever disregards My remembrance, his shall be a wretched life, and on the Day of Resurrection We shall raise him blind.’”

The chapter ends in a sort of miscellany, which includes some actual guidance on how to be “righteous”.

“So be patient with what they say, and celebrate the praise of your Lord before the rising of the sun and before the sunset, and glorify Him in watches of the night and at the day’s ends, that you may be pleased”. Note that the verbs here are italicised (or the reverse in my formatting), which is used to indicate that this is an instruction from God directly to the Prophet. This is interesting in that it means that although God is exhorting the Prophet to pray, it doesn’t necessarily apply to Muslims in general.

There’s also a kind of warning about wanting what others have - “Do not extend your glance toward what We have provided certain groups of them as a glitter of the life of this world, so that We may test them thereby”. In other words, if you’ve had good fortune it’s just a test from God to see where your loyalties lie. I quite like what is evidently a statement that sacrifices are unnecessary, “We do not ask any provision of you. It is We who provide for you”, although once again note that it’s specifically addressed to the Prophet.

Ta Ha turned out to be as unfocussed as I suspected, but it was easy going since all the verses were short, plus the reliving of the Moses story (for a change surprisingly close to the Biblical version) also made it easier in that there was a proper narrative for a change.