An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 91: You Burn Us, We’ll Burn You (The Houses (al-Buruj))
The Houses
(al-Buruj)
You Burn Us, We’ll Burn You.
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
And, for the record, I've no idea why these posts are suddenly coming in a Times New Roman style font when the originals are Calibri and have been since forever. As long as it's readable, I'll leave it.
The Houses (al-Buruj) 1-22
“By the sky with its houses, by the Promised Day, by the Witness and the Witnessed: perish the Men of the Ditch!”
Now there’s an opening! It bears going through and picking apart since the four verses that comprise it come with copious footnotes.
“By the sky with its houses” – the eponymous houses are the signs of the zodiac, which I think is the first astrological reference I’ve encountered so far in the Qur’an. It’s a shame it isn’t expanded upon, because it sounds pretty good as the start to an oath.
“By the Promised Day” – I think we can guess that this refers to Judgement Day, the Day of Reckoning etc. etc. what all the other names that have been given for the end times.
“by the Witness and the Witnessed” – the Witness is the Prophet, and the Witnessed is again the Day of Judgement (etc. etc.). Now, is this “witness” in the sense of an eye-witness, that the Prophet was granted a vision of the Day of Reckoning, or is this “witness” in the sense of Jehovah’s Witness, in that the Prophet is going around “witnessing” (i.e. proselytising) about the Day of Reckoning?
“perish the Men of the Ditch!” – and who are the Men of the Ditch? I recall a Battle of the Ditch, so my first guess would be opponents trying to stop the Prophet’s forces from entering Mecca. Except that this is listed as an early Meccan surah, so those struggles would not yet have happened.
Fortunately, the surah goes on to tell us - “The fire, abounding in fuel, above which they sat as they were themselves witnesses to what they did to the faithful.” It sounds here as if the Men of the Ditch entertained themselves by burning Muslims in a ditch. And although I’ve not been particularly impressed by the message(s) of the Qur’an, I don’t condone that kind of behaviour.
Of course, this being the Qur’an, it’s tit for tat time - “Indeed those who persecute the faithful men and women, and then do not repent, for them there is the punishment of hell, and for them there is the punishment of burning”. You burnt us, our God will burn you when you die. It’s not a great threat, especially if the Men of the Ditch think so little of your God that they’re already willing to torture and kill you. Still, my guess is that the Men of the Ditch came to a bad end of some kind as the followers of the Prophet grew in number. “Allah besieges them from all around”, this chapter later says of the faithless.
The rest is a quick breeze over some familiar stuff about the afterlife. The Prophet is asked “Did you receive the story of the hosts of Pharaoh and Thamūd?” to which the answer is yes, lots of times. We’re spared another repetition of People And Places Punished By Allah, however. Instead we are told “Rather it is a glorious Qurʾān, in a preserved tablet.” What is it with all the “Indeed”s and “Rather”s? They really don’t fit grammatically – are they meant as verbal intensifiers, like people abuse “Actually”? Are they verbal padding, like people abuse “So…”? Are they a poor translation of idioms that work better in Arabic?
That aside, I also wonder what the “preserved tablet” refers to. Does this mean that the Qur’an was originally engraved on stone? Or are we talking metaphorically here? Gah. Too many questions for such a tiny chapter!
You Burn Us, We’ll Burn You.
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
And, for the record, I've no idea why these posts are suddenly coming in a Times New Roman style font when the originals are Calibri and have been since forever. As long as it's readable, I'll leave it.
The Houses (al-Buruj) 1-22
“By the sky with its houses, by the Promised Day, by the Witness and the Witnessed: perish the Men of the Ditch!”
Now there’s an opening! It bears going through and picking apart since the four verses that comprise it come with copious footnotes.
“By the sky with its houses” – the eponymous houses are the signs of the zodiac, which I think is the first astrological reference I’ve encountered so far in the Qur’an. It’s a shame it isn’t expanded upon, because it sounds pretty good as the start to an oath.
“By the Promised Day” – I think we can guess that this refers to Judgement Day, the Day of Reckoning etc. etc. what all the other names that have been given for the end times.
“by the Witness and the Witnessed” – the Witness is the Prophet, and the Witnessed is again the Day of Judgement (etc. etc.). Now, is this “witness” in the sense of an eye-witness, that the Prophet was granted a vision of the Day of Reckoning, or is this “witness” in the sense of Jehovah’s Witness, in that the Prophet is going around “witnessing” (i.e. proselytising) about the Day of Reckoning?
“perish the Men of the Ditch!” – and who are the Men of the Ditch? I recall a Battle of the Ditch, so my first guess would be opponents trying to stop the Prophet’s forces from entering Mecca. Except that this is listed as an early Meccan surah, so those struggles would not yet have happened.
Fortunately, the surah goes on to tell us - “The fire, abounding in fuel, above which they sat as they were themselves witnesses to what they did to the faithful.” It sounds here as if the Men of the Ditch entertained themselves by burning Muslims in a ditch. And although I’ve not been particularly impressed by the message(s) of the Qur’an, I don’t condone that kind of behaviour.
Of course, this being the Qur’an, it’s tit for tat time - “Indeed those who persecute the faithful men and women, and then do not repent, for them there is the punishment of hell, and for them there is the punishment of burning”. You burnt us, our God will burn you when you die. It’s not a great threat, especially if the Men of the Ditch think so little of your God that they’re already willing to torture and kill you. Still, my guess is that the Men of the Ditch came to a bad end of some kind as the followers of the Prophet grew in number. “Allah besieges them from all around”, this chapter later says of the faithless.
The rest is a quick breeze over some familiar stuff about the afterlife. The Prophet is asked “Did you receive the story of the hosts of Pharaoh and Thamūd?” to which the answer is yes, lots of times. We’re spared another repetition of People And Places Punished By Allah, however. Instead we are told “Rather it is a glorious Qurʾān, in a preserved tablet.” What is it with all the “Indeed”s and “Rather”s? They really don’t fit grammatically – are they meant as verbal intensifiers, like people abuse “Actually”? Are they verbal padding, like people abuse “So…”? Are they a poor translation of idioms that work better in Arabic?
That aside, I also wonder what the “preserved tablet” refers to. Does this mean that the Qur’an was originally engraved on stone? Or are we talking metaphorically here? Gah. Too many questions for such a tiny chapter!
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