An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 54: Bruised Foreheads and God-Enforced Peace (Victory (al-Fath))

Victory (al-Fath) 1-29
Bruised Foreheads and God-Enforced Peace.

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

Victory (al-Fath) 1-29
“Indeed We have inaugurated for you a clear victory, that Allah may forgive you what is past of your sin and what is to come, and that He may perfect His blessing upon you and guide you on a straight path”

According to the description, the bulk of this chapter concerns a event where the Muslims were prevented from entering Mecca by polytheists, and ended up brokering a truce. And so most of it concerns itself with establishing the rightness of the Prophet’s cause, and admonishing those that didn’t join him.

We start with the usual fates for the faithful and faithless - “That He may punish the hypocrites, men and women, and the polytheists, men and women, who entertain a bad opinion of Allah” and how God is with those that swear themselves to the side of the Prophet - “Indeed those who swear allegiance to you, swear allegiance only to Allah: the hand of Allah is above their hands.” Handy that.

The Bedouins are singled out for particular scorn, since they evidently chose not to follow the Prophet - “The Bedouins who were left behind will tell you, ‘Our possessions and our families kept us occupied. So plead [to Allah] for our forgiveness!’”, but also it’s said that “There is no blame on the blind, nor is there any blame on the lame, nor is there blame on the sick”. In context, this means that
anyone that stayed behind with good reason is blameless, I wonder if it could be taken in isolation to mean something metaphorical, that there’s no blame on those who for some medical reason are unable to partake in religion, or even unable to believe. Maybe not, since non-believers are apparently made that way by Allah and yet condemned anyway.

The verse that “Allah has promised you abundant spoils which you will capture” is an odd one in that it presents plunder as being a holy thing; I thought earthly riches were supposed to be a worthless vanity? Unless God grants them to you, I guess.

The Qur’an also boasts about how wonderfully holy the Muslims are for keeping to the truce - “Allah sent down His composure upon His Apostle and upon the faithful, and made them abide by the word of Godwariness”. So only God can make you keep to a bargain? I’m not sure what that says about your character. From the footnotes I know that this is contrasted to the pagan Meccans who don’t return captives whereas the Muslims do, so in a way it’s understandable even if it does sound a bit boastful.

And finally you will know a true Muslim because of the (bruising? calluses?) on their forehead from bowing in prayer - “Their mark is [visible] on their faces, from the effect of prostration. Such is their description in the Torah and their description in the Evangel”. This makes me wonder where in the Bible it says about the faithful having a mark of some kind. There probably is, but there’s so much material I really don’t recall. |There’s some stuff about believers being “sealed in their foreheads” in Revelation, but that’s a metaphorical seal that only God can see.

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