An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 38: A Digression on “Generative Fluids” (Prostration (Al-Sajdah))

Prostration (Al-Sajdah) 1-30
A Digression on “Generative Fluids”.

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

Prostration (Al-Sajdah) 1-20
“The [gradual] sending down of the Book, there is no doubt in it, is from the Lord of all the worlds.”

After stating that this is the “gradual sending down” of the Book, the Qur’an then goes onto rebuke anyone that might not believe it is actually the word of God, by saying how great God is and how you’d be stupid not to believe in Him.

We get a bit of creation myth, and there’s an interesting take on the “six days” of creation, in that according to the footnotes the Arabic word translated here as “day” is actually a vague “unit of time”. Further, the following verse states that “He directs the command from the heaven to the earth; then it ascends toward Him in a day whose span is a thousand years by your reckoning.” So this is more like creation in Brahma years – one “day” of Allah-time is more like a thousand years of human-time. Interesting.

The first man is made first from clay, and “Then He made his progeny from an extract of a base fluid” – previously we’ve seen semen used in the creation of first men, although whose and from where has not yet been addressed. It seems strange to have both the clay and semen origins. I could see the semen as being some kind of magical life force, except that it’s also given that God “breathed into him of His Spirit” as per the Biblical creation myth. Unless, of course, here “base fluid” refers to the clay, but that doesn’t really fit as a description, and it doesn’t remove the very direct references to semen elsewhere in the Qur’an.

We then get back to some more reasons why you’d be foolish to deny the existence of God because stuff exists, and what is probably the naming verse for the chapter - “Only those believe in Our signs who, when they are reminded of them, fall down in prostration and celebrate the praise of their Lord, and they are not arrogant”. I thought it might have been something to do with how to pray, but perhaps not.

Prostration 21-30
“We shall surely make them taste the nearer punishment before the greater punishment, so that they may come back”

I’m not sure that these last ten verses really warranted their own section, but there are still a few comments to be made. In the quoted verse above, “they” are the faithless, and the “nearer punishment” describes the hardships of life, whereas the “greater punishment” is, of course, eternal burning. So having a tough life would seem to be God warning you not to be an unbeliever. Which doesn’t help much if you *are* a believer and your life is tough, but I suppose you put this down to some other Godly whim.

Moses gets a mention again, and it’s said of the Israelites that “amongst them We appointed imams to guide [the people] by Our command”. That’s another of those amusing “you’re all muslims really” arguments of the Qur’an, but if you take "imam" to mean some kind of religious guide in general, then, yes, I suppose it’s true.

And that’s about it, there’s more on the usual theme about rain and drought proving the existence of Allah and how the nice garden of the “Abode” awaits believers and the Fire awaits non-believers, yada yada yada.

That’s a shame, I was hoping that there might have been some useful instructions in that chapter, but it was short and sweet nonetheless.

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