An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 49 Ornaments Are Bad. Except For Silver Roofs and Golden Plates (Ornaments(al-Zukhruf))

Ornaments(al-Zukhruf) 1-89
Ornaments Are Bad. Except For Silver Roofs and Golden Plates.

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

Ornaments(al-Zukhruf) 1-20

“Did He adopt daughters from what He creates while He preferred you with sons?”

After the usual flannel about the Qur’an being the “Mother of Books” and God being great because He makes it rain and destroyed old civilisations that didn’t listen to His prophets (etc.), there’s something new, but also very confusing.

Starting from the quote at the top, it seems to be talking about daughters vs. sons, but to what end isn’t clear, and this is in part due to the confusing use of pronouns (as usual). “When one of them is brought the news of what he ascribes to the All-beneficent, his face becomes darkened and he chokes with suppressed agony”. The footnotes say that the “news” is of a birth of a daughter, so whoever “they” are consider it a curse rather than a blessing. Who are “they”? Possibly from context “they” are polytheists, but “they” could equally just be “people” or “fathers”. “They” are disappointed by the birth of a daughter because “they” say that she will be “One who is brought up amid ornaments and is inconspicuous in contests”. That’s a cultural thing, mate.

Apparently it’s also a bad thing to represent angels as female - “And they have made the angels —who are servants of the All-beneficent— females. Were they witness to their creation?” Possibly this could be supposed to mean that angels are sexless and representing them with a gender *at all* is a mistake, but I’m not so sure. Hopefully this will be cleared up.

Ornaments 21-40

“Did We give them a Book before this, so that they are holding fast to it? Rather they say, ‘We found our fathers following a creed, and we are indeed guided in their footsteps.’”

Some more familiar sentiments to begins with, and alas, no elucidation on whether daughters are supposed to be a good or a bad thing. No, we jump right back to people who don’t listen to prophets and what happens to them. And then there’s some very confusing theology.

The Qur’an says that “Were it not [for the danger] that mankind would be one community” then Allah would have granted various boons to the non-believers, for some reason. It’s interesting that being “one community” is seen as a bad thing, considering the notion of the umma in Islam. The footnotes say that this is specifically talking about a secular community, but even so it’s telling that God would rather keep people divided than united if it means that they aren’t worshipping Him. What kind of entity does that make Him?

For some reason the Qur’an talks about boons that could have been granted to even the faithless apart from this whole global secular community thing - “silver roofs for their houses”, which seems like a strange building material to use, but then there’s also mention of silver couches, and silver everything else. Metaphorical shiny pure stuff “silver”, and not actual silver metal? I dunno.

But worse than that, for the faithless “We assign him a devil who remains his companion”, and who then works to divert the faithless from the path. So despite claiming elsewhere that Allah will forgive those that ask for His forgiveness, somehow He also deliberately tries to corrupt people away from being able to do so. For the lolz?

Ornaments 41-60
“So hold fast to what has been revealed to you. Indeed you are on a straight path.”

It’s an odd, come to think about it, these verses in the Qur’an addressed to the Prophet telling him to keep his chin up and push on because he’s doing the right thing. If we take it at face value, that these really are the words of God as passed on by an angel to the Prophet, who then sets them down as a “manifest warning”, then what’s the rationale for including these bits? Option one – every word is holy therefore everything should be put down. Option two – it’s like a radio DJ reading out the “PS Love the show” parts of every request, or an actor reading out the stage instructions from a play (“Moves to stage right, looking angry”)

And if we don’t take it at face value but look at the Qur’an as a man-made document, it offers a third option, a little bit of self-promotion and an attempt to legitimise the messenger, and a fourth option, it’s the Prophet trying to convince himself that he’s doing the right thing. Possibly it’s a mix of all of these.

That aside, it’s another one of those sections that looks back at apostles of old, in this case mainly Moses and his battle of magic with the Egyptians. The Pharaoh mocks Moses for his common appearance and asks “Why have no bracelets of gold been cast upon him, nor have the angels come with him as escorts?”, another reference to “ornaments” and again the intent is that they are superfluous things (which… well, they are, but that’s kind of the point of them).

The there’s a brief mention of Jesus, referred to as the “son of Mary”, who according to the Qur’an “was just a servant whom We had blessed”.

Ornaments 61-89

“When Jesus brought the manifest proofs, he said, ‘I have certainly brought you wisdom, and [I have come] to make clear to you some of the things that you differ about. So be wary of Allah and obey me.”

It’s odd to see a Muslim Jesus, but it’s also funny how vague the references to His teachings are; that quote above is about the extent of it – some “manifest proofs” and making clear some things people differ about. Thrilling stuff.

The rest goes back to the familiar discussions of the fates awaiting in Heaven and Hell, with a few new details. People breaking into factions are destined for Hell, and we learn that the angel  who guards Hell is called Malik, and he doesn’t care about your complaints. We also learn that people go to Paradise with their spouses, which makes the whole "shy maidens/black-eyed houris" thing a bit awkward. Heaven all sounds very physical again, with golden plates to eat from and abundant fruits to eat. I mean, it could be metaphorical I guess, “golden plates” being, I dunno, a source of pure joy to “eat” the love (“abundant fruit”) of God or something; it just isn’t written in such a way as to seem anything other than the surface meaning.

Well. Again there are tiny bits of new stuff revealed amongst the old familiar themes, and again the surah doesn’t stand alone as a particularly coherent or structured message. It’s interesting that since The Throngs, and for the next three chapters, these are all in chronological order, pretty much right in the middle of the overall number of chapters, so perhaps that’s why they feel more like they belong together in terms of each containing parts of the other.