An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 42: The Big Book of Circular Reasoning (Ya Sin)

Ya Sin (Ya Sin) 1-83
The Big Book of Circular Reasoning.

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

Ya Sin (Ya Sin) 1-20

“Indeed We have put iron collars around their necks, which are up to the chins, so their heads are upturned”

“Ya Sin” is another name for the Prophet, as with “Ta Ha” before; I had a look to see if there was any particular meaning to these names, as if they meant something else (as with the various Biblical names meaning “God is With Us” or similar), or if they represented some hidden meaning, but came up blank. One exegesis states that “God knows best what is meant”, which seems like a bit of a cop-out to me.

To begin with the verses declare to Ya Sin that “By the Wise Qurʾān you are indeed one of the apostles, on a straight path”. Now, obviously if you are a believer this is what is dictated to the angel, and the Prophet has no direct hand in what is written. But to me, if you start your own book by declaring that the book says that you are a prophet so therefore you must be … I think you can see the circular reasoning here.

There’s then some stuff about how Allah has made the unbelievers to be unbelievers who won’t listen to the message of the Qur’an - “And We have put a barrier before them and a barrier behind them, then We have blind-folded them, so they do not see”, as well as the “iron collars” in the quote above, which are metaphorical collars like the “stiff-necked” Israelites who refused to listen to Moses. The next few verses then go on to essentially say that only believers will listen to the message of the Qur’an, which again seems kind of circular to me. Surely a divine message of absolute truth would convince anyone that heard/read it? It’s just an echo chamber if you only believe it if you already believe it.

By way of example we get a story of three un-named prophets sent to warn a town, and of course the townsfolk don’t listen to them and threaten to stone them. Reading this in 20 verse chunks means that it ends on a cliffhanger because verse 20 - “There came a man from the city outskirts, hurrying. He said, ‘O my people! Follow the apostles!”

Ya Sin 21-40

“A sign for them is the dead earth, which We revive and out of it bring forth grain, so they eat of it.”

What does the man from the city outskirts have to say? Pretty much that he believes the prophets and believes in Allah. The city doesn’t listen to him and is turned to ashes with “a single Cry”. I presume the single believer is saved, it doesn’t say.

The Qur’an then argues that the existence of things like night and day, or things growing, demonstrates the existence of God, as we’ve seen many times before. I thought it interesting that the footnotes cover a textual disagreement. The version given here says that “And the sun runs on to its place of rest”, translated from “li-mustaqarrin lahā”. The footnotes, however, give that an alternative reading is “‘lā mustaqarra lahā’” which means “it has no place of rest”. That’s maybe not a particularly important piece of doctrine, but if that particular expression can be interpreted in two diametrically opposed ways, then what else is similarly uncertain? And again how can the divine word of God be open to interpretation?

And finally it’s said that “Neither it behooves the sun to overtake the moon, nor may the night outrun the day, and each swims in an orbit”. Which doesn’t account for eclipses, plus clearly supports a geocentric model.

Ya Sin 41-60

“‘Did I not exhort you, O children of Adam, saying, “Do not worship Satan. He is indeed your manifest enemy.”

Satan has a strange position in Islamic, and to a certain extent, Christian thought. He presumably has no actual power, since it’s said often enough that only Allah has power to create all the various things on Earth and to know what people do, etc., but instead tricks people into worshipping him instead of Allah. One assumes that anything that goes against the Qur’an – be it other gods or arguments against theological points or scientific rebuttals of claims – can all be made out to be tricks from Satan to turn people away from Allah. What Satan gets out of this is unclear, although in the Qur’an so far he’s made out to be vain and desirous of being worshipped himself.

Anyway, the bulk of these verses don’t deal with that. Instead there’s a brief oblique reference to Noah’s Ark “A sign for them is that We carried their progeny in the laden ship, and We have created for them what is similar to it, which they ride” which I wouldn’t have spotted without the footnotes. The riding on similar things seems to me to point to other boats, although the footnotes state that some interpretations are the camel, the “ship of the desert”. Which would actually make more sense as something created by Allah (a living beast) rather than man (a constructed craft).

The text then compares the two fates of faithful and faithless, and there’s actually a hint at what the faithless do; they say “Shall we feed [someone] whom Allah would have fed, had He wished?”, in other words they refuse charity. It’s good to get something functional for a change.

Ya Sin 61-83

“Today We shall seal their mouths, and their hands shall speak to Us, and their feet shall bear witness concerning what they used to earn.’”

I don’t have much to say for this last block of verses. There are a couple, including the one quoted above, that say how Allah can make unbelievers fail to see and so keep them from the truth of the Qur’an (also “blotting out their eyes” and making them spiritually “deformed” so they are unable to proceed). This is in contrast to earlier where it’s intimated that God has already done this. I still don’t really see the point in this other than as an excuse for non-believers, since it would be more miraculous for the “scales to fall from their eyes”.

There’s also an argument for the existence for God because cattle have lots of uses.

And that’s about it for Ya Sin. I feel like I’ve been fairly harsh on this one, but it’s only because it largely repeats the same arguments of all the previous chapters. It’s a bit more interesting in that the writing is more poetic and circumspect than some.