An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 60: A Broken Moon, Plus: Taste My Punishment, Beeyatch (The Moon (al-Qamar))

The Moon (al-Qamar) 1-54
A Broken Moon, Plus: Taste My Punishment, Beeyatch.

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 Moon (al-Qamar) 1-20

“The Hour has drawn near and the moon is split.”

The splitting moon appears to be some kind of symbol of the end times; although it’s phrased very simply and matter-of-factly here, it’s a great image; I love the way it was done in the Guy Pearce version of the Time Machine. Perhaps the less said, however, about the Doctor Who episode “Kill the Moon” the better.

The verses then go on to say how the non-believers who claim things are just magic will emerge from their graves in the end times and feel a mix of fear and embarrassment over having been wrong. And to illustrate this, what better than a rehash of all the old prophets, yet again.

It starts with Noah, in a vessel of “planks and nails”, and also this section touches on Ad which is struck by an icy wind that knocks people over like “the trunks of uprooted palm trees”. There is a good poetic device, however, where each description has a kind of chorus that runs “Certainly We have made the Qurʾān simple for the sake of admonishment. So is there anyone who will be admonished?” Aside from making the word “admonish” look odd, it’s a good recurring refrain. As is

“So how were My punishment and My warnings?”, although I think I’ve done the “How’s my Smiting?” joke already.

The Moon 21-40

“Thamūd denied the warnings, and they said, ‘Are we to follow a lone human from ourselves?! Indeed then we would be in error and madness.’”

I feel that the people of Thamūd had a point – why should they believe the word of one man ranting about what God has told him? There’s a level of confirmation bias going on here, as I’m pretty sure you could find many more examples of times when somebody went around prophesying terrible destruction because God warned them, and no destruction came. Leave aside the obvious objection that the stories of, for example, Lot and Noah didn’t actually happen and are merely illustrative fables meant to show God’s power,  and so obviously things are going to work as predicted; it’s a little like marvelling at how Gandalf managed to predict that leaving Gollum alive would ultimately be beneficial. Even if we generously allow that these things did really happen, that’s still only what, six examples when somebody warned against disaster, and it happened. And for all we know these prophets could have simply been skilled meteorologists.

Anyway, Thamūd has that weird test where they hamstring a she-camel that they are supposed to leave alone (is this meant to be a metaphor, perhaps?), and get destroyed by a “Cry” that turns them to stone. And then we also get a brief summary of the story of Lot. “How’s my Smiting” gets joined by “‘Taste My punishment and My warnings!’” as a bumper sticker.

The Moon 41-55

“Certainly the warnings came to Pharaoh’s clan who denied all of Our signs. So We seized them with the seizing of One [who is] all-mighty, Omnipotent.”

The examples finish with Pharaoh, presumably referencing the Moses story. Sadly we don’t get a return of the chorus; instead that Qur’an offers a challenge to the non-believers – “Think you’re hard enough?” (“Are your faithless better than those, or have you [been granted] some immunity in the scriptures?”). The verses finish with a reminder that the faithless will be dragged on the face into the Fire whereas the faithful get “gardens and streams in the abode of truthfulness”.

There’s not a lot of novelty in this surah, but the poetry in this one is good; it actually feels like a structured poem rather than a lot of random thoughts bunged together.