An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 66: Cross-Cultural Marriage, And A Bit Of Gratuitous Violence (The Woman Tested (al-Mumtahanah))

The Woman Tested (al-Mumtahanah)
Cross-Cultural Marriage, And A Bit Of Gratuitous Violence.

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 Woman Tested (al-Mumtahanah) 1-13
“O you who have faith! Do not take My enemy and your enemy for friends”

This surah begins by warning he faithful not to aid or fraternise with “the enemy”, saying that they are untrustworthy. It then goes on to clarify that it specifically means “only in regard to those who made war against you on account of religion and expelled you from your homes”, and that if the fight is not over religion or expulsion from homes (for which I’m pretty sure are two of the main causes of war), then it’s better to forgive your enemy - “Allah does not forbid you in regard to those who did not make war against you on account of religion and did not expel you from your homes, that you deal with them with kindness and justice. Indeed Allah loves the just.”

Those verses, I can see as being part and parcel of a lot of the thinking behind Islamic fundamentalism, but like the earlier verses about striking at the necks of the unbelievers, it’s pretty evident in context that it refers to a specific period of struggle. Less obviously than the striking at necks verse, and I did need the commentary to place it at a time when the Prophet was trying to take back Mecca. To me, although it’s pretty uncompromising, it no more makes the Qur’an inherently violent as all the stuff about dashing the heads of babies on rocks in the Bible makes Christianity inherently violent. On the other hand, though, in both religions the existence of these kinds of verses can be, and have been, cherry-picked to support atrocities.

Moving on from that, after a brief use of Abraham as an exemplar of … something, I’m not sure what. Generally being faithful in the face of adversity, I think, I don’t really care, we get to the “Woman Tested” part of the chapter, which deals with “When faithful women come to you as immigrants, test them”.

What this test might be is unclear, but in a later verse the Prophet is given instructions to make them swear an oath “that they shall not ascribe any partners to Allah, that they shall not steal, nor commit adultery, nor kill their children, nor utter any slander that they may have intentionally fabricated, nor disobey you in what is right”. Apart from the last one, these seem broadly reasonable, but in all of them there is a danger of them being taken too dogmatically to the point of injustice and unfairness. The last one is problematic, they must swear to obey the Prophet in “what is right”. And who decides “what is right”? One presumes … the Prophet.

There are some rules which seem to be about wife-swapping; Muslim men marrying pagan women that have converted, and possibly vice versa as well, although I didn’t think going apostate was allowed. Maybe it’s assumed that if a Muslim woman marries a pagan man, she does not convert to his religion.

Anyway, it’s fairly confusing because of the way the pronouns don’t convert clearly into English - “They are not lawful for them, nor are they lawful for them”. In this case “they” and “them” are Muslim women and pagan man, and then vice versa for the second half. Okay, so that actually does clear up my confusion of earlier – a pagan man can’t take a Muslim wife.

There’s some equally confusing stuff about dowries as well, “Ask [the infidels] for what you have spent, and let the faithless ask for what they have spent” is just part of it. I *think* that it’s got something to do with refunding a pagan man if he tries to buy a Muslim wife, and possibly the other way around as well, which seems a bit odd but the underlying theme appears to be to encourage fair-dealing and harmony.

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