An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 58: Fluffy White Clouds and Youths of Pearl (The Mount (al-Tur))

The Mount (al-Tur) 1-49
Fluffy White Clouds and Youths of Pearl.

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

The Mount (al-Tur) 1-20
” By the Mount [Sinai], by the Book inscribed on an unrolled parchment”

That’s odd that the Arabic for mount should be so close to the word “Tor”. One thing I didn’t address last time in The Scatterers, which I meant to, is that often the titles for these surahs are drawn from a particular verse, but I did wonder if they are also picked often because they reflect many overall themes within the surah. I’ve not really noticed that it has, so far, but this is something I will put more effort into looking for from now on. For instance, one could, perhaps, draw the parallel from “The Scatterers” that the various people that get destroyed for not listening to prophets are “scattered” in some form. It’s a bit of a stretch though.

Back to this chapter, and it’s looking to be one with very short verses. The chapter looks to a time of Judgement, “On the day when the sky whirls violently, and the mountains move with an awful motion” when those who did not believe will be “shoved toward the fire of hell forcibly”.

Meanwhile, those who did believe “will be reclining on arrayed couches, and We will wed them to big-eyed houris”. I can’t help but think of the “big-eyed houris” as being anime girls. Perhaps not *that* big-eyed? Be that as it may, we’re back to the magical sky brothel again, and I can’t help but note that this only seems to be applicable to heterosexual men.

The Mount 21-49
“The faithful and their descendants who followed them in faith —We will make their descendants join them, and We will not stint anything from [the reward of] their deeds. Every man is a hostage to what he has earned.”

There are details again of this Heavenly afterlife, where the people are served by youths like pearls and “they will pass from hand to hand a cup wherein there will be neither any vain talk nor sinful speech”. It’s very odd. I can’t fathom if this is meant to be metaphorical for something or if it’s actually intended as the real version of Paradise. I’m sure it would get boring after a while, and if not, why not? Are these people some kind of Lotus Eaters blissed up on Allah Juice such that they no longer have any drive or ambition or interest in anything apart from lounging around?  Even if this is meant as a metaphor for a general sense of bliss in a spiritual form, it still strips away a large part of what it means to be human and sounds as much of a curse as the boiling water and burning skin stuff in the other direction.

The rest is more of a challenge to non-believers to come up with their own revelations - “Do they have a ladder [leading up to heaven] whereby they eavesdrop? If so let their eavesdropper produce a manifest authority”. I quite like that bit of snark, although obviously the implication is “because I do”, and we’re meant to take that on faith or we get burned for eternity.

This verse was interesting - “Were they to see a fragment falling from the sky, they would say, ‘A cumulous cloud’”. Because the classification of clouds is a relatively new one so I wonder if this is just a modern translation inserting the idea of “cumulus” (note the *correct* spelling…) or if the Arabic word does actually specifically refer to a fluffy white low altitude cloud. I mean, there’s no reason that a language couldn’t already have different words for different kinds of cloud. And a fragment of what?

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