An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 115: I Will Not Worship Your False Gods, Sam-I-Am (The Faithless (al-Kafirun))

The Faithless (al-Kafirun)
I Will Not Worship Your False Gods, Sam-I-Am.

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 Faithless (al-Kafirun 1-6)
“Say, ‘O faithless ones!
I do not worship what you worship,
nor do you worship what I worship;
nor will I worship what you have worshipped
nor will you worship what I worship.
To you your religion, and to me my religion.’”

According to the introductory notes, this surah is a response to some polytheists who suggested to the Prophet that they’d worship his God for a year if he worshipped their gods for a year.

It’s a pretty succinct – “no”. It’s almost a “Green Eggs and Ham” of a surah, with the various iterations of who worships what, and I rather like the repetition. Beyond that, I note that the last verse is pretty magnanimous – to each their own. Although the Prophet declines to give up his God, he doesn’t come across here as particularly offended by the suggestion – there’s the insult of calling them “faithless”, but no overt threats of violence or eternal damnation. Further, it’s even pretty much said that, okay, if you aren’t going to worship my God then stick to your own, just don’t ask me to worship your gods.

This, perhaps, is because it’s an early Meccan one and so the general message is still fairly chill. This shows a Prophet still trying gentle persuasion to win converts rather than threatening hellfire, damnation and striking at necks.

And that, really, is all I have to say about it.

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