An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 70: God Created Sick Children (Dispossession (al-Taghabun))

Dispossession (al-Taghabun)
God Created Sick Children.

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

Dispossession (al-Taghabun) 1-18
“The day when He will gather you for the Day of Gathering, that will be a day of dispossession”

This is not, as might be assumed, an AS Byatt sequel, but it probably would have been more interesting had it been. The first four verses are familiar stuff about how Allah created everything and knows everything, etc. etc.

After being created, “Then some of you are faithless and some of you are faithful”, which seems fair enough until you contrast it with a few lines later that “He formed you and perfected your forms”. Well … if a person can be faithless and therefore end up burning for eternity, that’s not a very perfect form unless somewhere along the line God *wants* this to happen.

For the rest of it Allah doesn’t come out looking very good either - “No affliction visits [anyone] except by Allah’s leave.” So those children dying from leukemia or suffering brittle bone disease where even a hug from their parents will cause them pain and injury – that happens by Allah’s leave does it?

Not that the rest of this surah would seem to care about sick children because not only does it spread paranoia – “among your spouses and children you have enemies; so beware of them”, it also avers that “your possessions and children are a trial”. Possessions, as an attachment to material things, I can understand. But your children? How cold.

The “dispossession” of the title is where the faithless are “dispossessed” of their place in Paradise, with some of the usual blether about running streams and inmates of the fire. It’s probably not meant to sound callous, but this surah really rustled my jimmies.

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