An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 47: Talking Skin, Hooting Critics and… How Long Did The Creation Take? (Elaborated (Fussilat))

Elaborated (Fussilat) 1-54
Talking Skin, Hooting Critics and… How Long Did The Creation Take?

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

Elaborated (Fussilat) 1-20

“They say, ‘Our hearts are in veils [which shut them off] from what you invite us to, and there is a deafness in our ears, and there is a curtain between us and you. So act [as your faith requires]; we too are acting [according to our own].’”

This surah begins with a bit of creation myth, by way of demonstrating the power of Allah. And it’s quite interesting in that there are some snippets that haven’t been given before, to my memory.

I was a little surprised that there’s verse that mentions “Him who created the earth in two days”; that seems like a truncated creation, particularly when a six-day creation has been mentioned in a previous surah, but then it goes on that God “ordained therein its [various] means of sustenance in four days”. That first part simply refers to the physical body of the earth, and all of creation is still a six-day one. Continuity is maintained. Note, also, that the Arabic word translated as “day” can also mean, as given in the footnotes, “epoch”. So the Qur’an is not giving a literal 6 x 24 hour day creation. I believe that the Hebrew word (I want to say “yom”) that is translated as “day” in Genesis 1 can also mean a general period of time as well, and I also recall musing way back in my observations of Genesis 1 that if these were like Brahma days then the account is not too far-fetched.

Of course, that raises a question – presumably an omnipotent God, who can, in the words of the Qur’an, tell something to “be” and it is, could *not* create a world in six days, or even an instant. Why would God need 6 days, let alone 400 billion years, to create a universe? However, I think I could accept that this was the case for Mysterious God Reasons ™ moreso than a literal 6 day creation.

There are some details that are nicely poetic if not technically correct - “He turned to the heaven, and it was smoke, and He said to it and to the earth, ‘Come! Willingly or unwillingly!’ They said, ‘We come heartily.’” This is like God separating Earth and Sky, a common motif. And also “We have adorned the lowest heaven with lamps, and guarded them”, which we’ve had before, and there’s a reference to seven heavens again. It’s not obvious here if the “lamps” are stars or the sun and moon, or both.

After the creation myth, there are a few warnings about previous people that didn’t listen to prophets, in this case Ad and Thamud. Ad is destroyed by an icy gale, and Thamud by a “humiliating bolt” which from earlier verses seems to be a bolt of thunder (and lightning?).

Elaborated 21-40

“They will say to their skins, ‘Why did you bear witness against us?’ They will say, ‘We were given speech by Allah, who gave speech to all things. He created you the first time, and to Him you are being brought back.”

Here, the eyes, ears and skin of the faithless testify against them to Allah, leading to a a weird conversation between people and their skin. Now, I’ve seen this ridiculed as saying that the Qur’an thinks ears can talk, but it seems more clearly meant to be metaphorical: the sin of the faithless is plain to read, as if their skin was talking. It’s like fossils “telling a story”. So it sounds odd, but it makes a poetic kind of sense.

The rest of this section is familiar stuff about the fate of the righteous and the faithless. Those who reject the Qur’an and “hoot it down”, another odd translational turn of phrase, but neatly derisive of the objectors. But there’s not much that tells you what is actually righteous. The pretty useless advice to “Repel [evil] with what is best”, which is reminiscent of a certain “Be Best” campaign, but we are also told that if we Be Best then “he between whom and you was enmity, will be as though he were a sympathetic friend”. This seems a bit backwards, since I’d expect making peace with your enemies would be a way to Be Best, not the other way around.

Oh and “none is granted it except the greatly endowed”. I’m just going to leave that there.

Elaborated 41-54

“Soon We shall show them Our signs in the horizons and in their own souls until it becomes clear to them that He is the Real. Is it not sufficient that your Lord is witness to all things?”

This section starts with the Qur’an telling us how good it is - “it is an august Book: falsehood cannot approach it, from before it nor from behind it”. Does that count? I mean, are you allowed to say “this is a very good book” within the book itself? There’s some explanation as to why it’s in Arabic (because it would be silly to have an Arabic prophet teaching to Arabs in a non-Arabic book, basically).

The rest kind of skips between people that don’t listen to the message, how Allah knows everything that happens, and how people are swift to ask God for help when things are bad but tend not to pay Him any attention when things are good. I suppose the underlying message here is to always bear God in your thoughts, hence the regular daily prayers. That way you demonstrate your devotion and don’t merely treat God like a wishing well. Which makes me wonder what it would matter to a God that is all-merciful. There are many parents, and carers, in the world that do what they do without ever demanding thanks from their charges; they do it because they care. That’s not to say that they don’t feel resentful sometimes, but it is what it is. So what kind of entity does that make God if He gets huffy at not being appreciated, and if mortal humans can act in a more selfless and giving fashion than God?