An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 74: I’m Not Crazy; The Voice of God Told Me So (The Pen (al-Qalam))

The Pen (al-Qalam) 1-52
I’m Not Crazy; The Voice of God Told Me So.

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 Pen (al-Qalam) 1-20

“Nūn. By the Pen and what they write: you are not, by your Lord’s blessing, crazy, and yours indeed will be an everlasting reward, and indeed you possess a great character.”

There’s one of those random Arabic characters at the start of this chapter, but beyond that this chapter is like the previous couple, where the Prophet uses the Qur’an to reinforce his own arguments. The opening verses here basically say “See? I’m not mad, because God told me so and I’ve written it down.”

It goes on “You will see and they will see, which one of you is crazy” – Haha! We’ll soon see who’s mad! It’s not me, writing down the words that God tells me to. Because I’ve written here, see, and therefore it’s true. I thought the word “crazy” was a bit too modern-casual to fit the tone of a holy book, so I plugged the Arabic verse into Google translate and it gave me “What are you by the grace of your Lord with madness?” Which is a bit clunky, but somehow sounds more like the tone of the KJV and a bit more in the religious book idiom. As we shall see shortly, it’s not the only strange word choice the translators have chosen for this chapter.

God gives the Prophet some advice on people to be wary of “And do not obey any vile swearer, scandal-monger, talebearer, hinderer of all good, sinful transgressor, callous and, on top of that, baseborn, —[only] because he has wealth and children.” Now, I made fun of the earlier part, but this seems reasonable advice (albeit “sinful transgressor” is vague and tautological), and it warns against what amounts to an argument from … I want to say “authority” but it isn’t really. An argument from material success? Just because someone is wealthy doesn’t make them right, anyway, is the message.

This same unpleasant rich man also declares the words of the Prophet to be “myths of the ancients” but will get punished - “Soon We shall brand him on the snout”. Or, he’ll get a punch in the snoot (per Rocky and Bullwinkle). This is another odd word choice for the translation. I plugged it onto Goole translate again and got … “We'll call it on Khartoum”. Er. Okay. I appreciate that Google translate is a rough tool at best, but I’m not seeing any connection here. I’m assuming that there was some cultural practice for branding animals on the snout for some reason, and the choice of the word “snout” rather than “nose” makes the wealthy hypocrite character seem more animalistic – a Capitalist Pig (tm), perhaps.

The chapter then switches gears, talking about people gathering fruit by dawn, evidently in contravention of some divine law since Allah visits the “Garden” while they sleep and “So by the dawn it was like a harvested field” – according to the notes this can be translated as also “like a sand dune”, or “like a gloomy night”, or “like black ashes”. Desolate, at any road.

The Pen 21-40

“At dawn they called out to one another, ‘Get off early to your field if you have to gather [the fruits].’”

There’s not too much to report for this chunk of verses. Most of them continue the story of the people above whose crops were ruined because they didn’t pay due deference to Allah. They set off in the morning hoping to gather their crops and boasting that “today no needy man shall come to you in it”, and then when they discover that their crops have been destroyed they are distraught, blame each other and realise that they ought to have honoured Allah. They hope that if they turn to Allah then their crops will be restored or replaced.

Isn’t that a little like extortion? Worship me or your crops will be destroyed.

This is compared then to the afterlife of the faithful, and the faithless are challenged “Do you possess a scripture in which you read that you shall indeed have in it [the afterlife] whatever you would like?” Which raises the question, what if the answer if “Yes”. What then? Obviously the intent here is that the Qu’ran is a proper and true description of what will happen in the afterlife, and any other versions are just made up. But to me, one assertion is the same as any other.

The Pen 41-52

“The day when the catastrophe occurs, and they are summoned to prostrate themselves, they will not be able [to do it].”

Here Allah talks directly to the Prophet concerning how to behave towards the doubters and faithless who “devour [him] with their eyes” - “So leave Me with those who deny this discourse. We will draw them imperceptibly [into ruin], whence they do not know”. In other words, those who don’t believe the Qur’an will be drawn into ruin by Allah, expect then the next verse is “I will grant them respite, for My devising is indeed sure”. So… are they drawn into ruin or given respite? Or is the respite available if they repent.

Because the surah then mentions Jonah (“The Man of the Fish”) and how he would have been “cast on a bare shore” had he not “called out when choked with grief” and been saved by a “blessing that came to his rescue from his Lord”. Which implies to me that salvation is possible through turning to God. I’m guessing the mechanism here is “submission”, as opposed to the Christian version which is “accepting Jesus Christ as saviour”. As a non-believer I’m at a loss as to what the practical differences between the two are in terms of how you adjust your psychology.

And that’s about it for The Pen, a strange little collection of thoughts that does, surprisingly, contain a few nuggets of good advice mixed in with the personal agenda.