An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 76: More Pointless Actions by Allah (Lofty Stations (al-Ma’arij))

Lofty Stations (al-Ma’arij) 1-44
More Pointless Actions by Allah.

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

Lofty Stations (al-Ma’arij) 1-22
“An asker asked for a punishment bound to befall —which none can avert from the faithless— from Allah, Lord of the lofty stations.”

The “Asker” in the quote above is presumably asking Allah to punish the guilty (or faithless, it seems to be the same). And this surah warns them not to expect an immediate result, because Allah is He to Whom “a day whose span is fifty thousand years”. So this at least acknowledges the idea of deep time, and sounds more like the Brahma years. It also suggests that the creation of the universe took three hundred thousand years, which is… well, to be honest it’s probably closer to the wrong guess of six days than it is to the truth, because on a cosmic scale, let alone a geological one, that’s not a lot of time. But I’ll give them points for trying.

And then, of course, given any opportunity to describe horrors ad punishment, the Qur’an then goes on to speak of mountains flowing like molten copper and a fire that burns away the scalp. And of those who are spared,  “no friend will inquire about [the welfare of his] friend, [though] they will be placed within each other’s sight”. Now. I’ve addressed this before. If the friend who ends up in Paradise is able to see the suffering of his friend who ends in Hell, but is somehow stripped of the capacity to care… what’s that all about? You’re a good person, now let’s remove your compassion. How is that in any way good?

Oh, and those burning in Hell promise the lives of everyone else if they can escape, and all their hoarded wealth is no use to them, because they should have given it to the poor. But, apparently, “man has been created covetous”, and again I have to ask – what’s that all about? Why bother creating something that you know is going to fail according to your criteria, and then punishing it for failing. What kind of rubbish design is that? It’s like getting angry at a fuse for blowing.

Loft Stations 23-44
“So I swear by the Lord of the easts and the wests that We are able to replace them by [others] better than them and We are not to be outmaneuvered.”

The first part of this chunk lists the characteristics of the people that will get “gardens” – keeping to oaths and testimonies, remembering to pray, giving to charity and “those who guard their private parts (except from their spouses and their slave women, for then they are not blameworthy)”.

Nota bene, people, keeping sex slaves is okay with Allah.

The narrative then switches to the other side, with faithless people running to avoid their fate, and the quote under the subheading, which again seems to reinforce the concept that God created people designed to fail.

The response, particularly the way it’s laid out in the translation, is a little like a beat poem:

 “So leave them to gossip and play
until they encounter their day,
which they are promised:”

If only more was written like that to make it more interesting. As it is, this is yet another promise of punishment or reward depending on the level of faith, although it does at least give some examples of “correct” behaviour”.

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