An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 67: Ahmad, the Mystery Apostle (Ranks (al-Saff))

Ranks (al-Saff)
Ahmad, the Mystery Apostle.

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

Ranks (al-Saff) 1-14
“It is greatly outrageous to Allah that you should say what you do not do”

For a short chapter, this one is really all over the place. Each verse, although not particularly large, seems to jump to a different concept than the one before it, so consequently this review will probably be just as disjointed.

So, first of all the concept of “saying what you do not do” in the quote above. Which, I guess, means hypocrisy, not practising what you preach, lying about what you are going to do. And not saying something like “I am unable to flap my arms and fly”. But that’s where we leave that argument anyway, and jump to the titular verse which says that “Allah loves those who fight in His way in ranks, as if they were a compact structure”.

The meaning here seems to be to promote unity amongst the followers of Allah – all Muslims move as one body as far as following Allah goes. Which is one of those concepts which seems reasonable enough, since unity is good, right? But of course it depends on how that unity is both directed and enforced, and whose deciding how to interpret the will of Allah. So one the one hand you could have a strong, cohesive society, but on the other you have a group of willing servants that do not question orders.

Equally problematic is a later verse that urges the reader to “wage jihād in the way of Allah with your possessions and your persons”, because the phrase jihād  is notoriously equivocative on a general sense of religious duty and of waging holy war. Since this isn’t a particularly combative chapter, I’d guess that it’s almost certainly meant I this context to be in the same sense as religious duty and not killing people.

Also within this chapter we get Moses and Jesus held up as examplars of previous Apostles of Allah. When the people (I guess Egyptians) reject Moses, “Allah made their hearts swerve, and Allah does not guide the transgressing lot”. Which is akin to God “hardening Pharaoh’s heart” in the Bible. Here, Allah makes their “hearts swerve”, and then washes His hands of them because they are a “transgressing lot”. But He made them that way in the first place. It’s the old conundrum of an omni-everything God – if anyone disobeys Him then He has to somehow be responsible for that disobedience in the first place; cue sophistry.

Jesus, on the other hand, apparently tells of “an apostle who will come after me, whose name is Aḥmad”. He does? I don’t remember that from the Bible, and to be honest I can’t recall an Apostle called Ahmad in the Qur’an either.

And finally, the Qur’an asks “who is a greater wrongdoer than him who fabricates falsehoods against Allah, while he is being summoned to Islam?” I dunno, a mass-murderer perhaps? You don’t even need the “mass-“ part, really. I can think of quite a few misdemeanours that are greater “wrong-doing” than someone that makes up some excuse for not worshipping a particular concept of God.

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