An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 63: Christians Are Okay, But Monks Are Rubbish (Iron (al-Hadid))

Iron (al-Hadid) 1-29
Christians Are Okay, But Monks Are Rubbish.

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

Iron (al-Hadid) 1-29

 “He makes the night pass into the day and makes the day pass into the night, and He knows best what is in the breasts.”

Although this surah is titled “Iron”, iron only gets mentioned briefly in verse 25; “and We sent down iron, in which there is great might and uses for mankind”. There was an opportunity to extend this as a metaphor, how iron is strong but can be shaped and put to many uses, like, I don’t know, faith or something. But, no, it’s lost amidst one of those “Things Exist Therefore God” arguments.

Which is a shame, because actually this surah has some pretty good poetry in it. It lacks the repeating motifs of the past few surahs and although mainly makes the same arguments as we’ve seen many times it does so with a bit of panache. Earthly riches, for example, are likened to “the rain whose vegetation impresses the farmer; then it withers and you see it turn yellow, then it becomes chaff”.

Rather than store wealth, the Qur’an advises (or “admonishes”, as it usually says) “Why should you not spend in the way of Allah, while to Allah belongs the heritage of the heavens and the earth?” It encourages charity, and even has words of high praise for the Christians - “We put in the hearts of those who followed him kindness and mercy” (“him” in this case being Jesus). However, it’s not particularly keen on monks - “But as for monasticism, they innovated it —We had not prescribed it for them— only seeking Allah’s pleasure. Yet they did not observe it with due observance”. So not only is it a man-made invention of piety, but one that they don’t do very well! Elsewhere this surah advises more of a middle ground – not railing against misfortune nor being prideful over success.

However, this is evidently a later surah written after the Muslims conquered Mecca, since “Not equal [to others] are those of you who spent and fought before the victory. They are greater in rank”. These people are presumably the “Foremost” of the last surah, even though that was a much earlier one. We know from other surahs that those who hung back are in for a good lambasting, many times over.

Lastly, there’s discussion of the different fates on Judgement Day, and I note that “The day you will see the faithful, men and women, with their light moving swiftly before them”. So, both men and women are mentioned, but we still don’t know what the women get instead of wide-eyed houris (somehow I suspect that the women that would *want* wide-eyed houris would be considered by Islam to be destined for the other place). Talking of which, there’s a rather harsh moment where those in Heaven refuse to offer any help to friends and relatives who end up in Hell. Which raises a thorny issue – can Heaven ever really be heavenly if you are aware that people that you once knew and loved are suffering? What kind of monstrous divine mogadon is issued to make you cease caring about someone and think that their punishment is deserved? Are you a good person if you happily ignore somebody’s suffering and decide that they “deserved” is for not believing unsupported assertions?

Oh, and this is chapter 57, which means we are now halfway through the Qur’an, but from here-on the chapters get shorter and shorter, so it’s well over halfway in terms of the volume of material.