An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 98: Be A Good Boy And Give To Charity (The Night (al-Layl))
The Night (al-Layl)
Be A Good Boy And Give To Charity.
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 Night (al-Layl) 1-21
“By the night when it envelops, by the day when it brightens”
It’s funny how, even though the chapters are sorted according to length, they quite often seem to bunch together by common theme. After The Sun and The Dawn, we get another surah that begins with an oath sworn by day and night. There’s one coming up called The Morning Brightness which I suspect may be similar as well.
In this case, what is sworn to is that “your endeavours are indeed unlike”. By which the surah means to compare the righteous and un-righteous in their endeavours, rather than anything about how hard people work. On the one hand “him who gives and is Godwary and confirms the best promise” gets what sounds like a comfortable and easy reward - “We shall surely ease him into facility”. On the other hand, one who is “stingy and self-complacent” will be “eased” into “hardship”. It’s an odd choice of words once again – being eased into facility sounds a little like being wheeled into an old folks home, whilst hardship isn’t something you’d consider being “eased” into in the first place, like you will be placed slowly and carefully into “the Blaze”. The meaning is pretty clear though, possibly because it’s the same as all the previous surahs.
The end of the chapter expounds a little on how a person can become “Godwary” and be saved from the Blaze. Charity, mainly – a person that “gives his wealth to purify himself and does not expect any reward from anyone”. Although I tend to disagree or at least grow weary of the constant threats of burning from the Qur’an, when it does actually get around to giving some examples of “correct” behaviour, I don’t tend to disagree much. I don’t know about the idea of giving wealth to “purify” oneself; that seems to be begging the question that wealth is in and of itself an “impure” thing. Generosity and charity, on the other hand, dig deep into inherent instincts towards equitable sharing of resources that we social apes have evolved. I note also that studies have shown that young men are more inclined towards being charitable when there’s a woman to impress. Maybe rather than making Allah a nebulous force (with unavoidable male traits) that will burn you forever if you disobey, the message would work more powerfully if it was a sexy Goddess who would be very impressed with you if you were generous. Leastways if you were trying to recruit young men to your religion. I suppose the Allah’s Magical Sky Brothel full of big-eyed houris is what that’s for.
Be A Good Boy And Give To Charity.
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 Night (al-Layl) 1-21
“By the night when it envelops, by the day when it brightens”
It’s funny how, even though the chapters are sorted according to length, they quite often seem to bunch together by common theme. After The Sun and The Dawn, we get another surah that begins with an oath sworn by day and night. There’s one coming up called The Morning Brightness which I suspect may be similar as well.
In this case, what is sworn to is that “your endeavours are indeed unlike”. By which the surah means to compare the righteous and un-righteous in their endeavours, rather than anything about how hard people work. On the one hand “him who gives and is Godwary and confirms the best promise” gets what sounds like a comfortable and easy reward - “We shall surely ease him into facility”. On the other hand, one who is “stingy and self-complacent” will be “eased” into “hardship”. It’s an odd choice of words once again – being eased into facility sounds a little like being wheeled into an old folks home, whilst hardship isn’t something you’d consider being “eased” into in the first place, like you will be placed slowly and carefully into “the Blaze”. The meaning is pretty clear though, possibly because it’s the same as all the previous surahs.
The end of the chapter expounds a little on how a person can become “Godwary” and be saved from the Blaze. Charity, mainly – a person that “gives his wealth to purify himself and does not expect any reward from anyone”. Although I tend to disagree or at least grow weary of the constant threats of burning from the Qur’an, when it does actually get around to giving some examples of “correct” behaviour, I don’t tend to disagree much. I don’t know about the idea of giving wealth to “purify” oneself; that seems to be begging the question that wealth is in and of itself an “impure” thing. Generosity and charity, on the other hand, dig deep into inherent instincts towards equitable sharing of resources that we social apes have evolved. I note also that studies have shown that young men are more inclined towards being charitable when there’s a woman to impress. Maybe rather than making Allah a nebulous force (with unavoidable male traits) that will burn you forever if you disobey, the message would work more powerfully if it was a sexy Goddess who would be very impressed with you if you were generous. Leastways if you were trying to recruit young men to your religion. I suppose the Allah’s Magical Sky Brothel full of big-eyed houris is what that’s for.
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