An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 117: Infamy For Abu Lahab And His Wife (Palm Fibre (al-Masad))
Palm Fibre
(al-Masad)
Infamy For Abu Lahab And His Wife.
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
Palm Fibre (al-Masad) 1-5
“Perish the hands of Abu Lahab, and perish he!
Neither his wealth availed him, nor what he had earned.
Soon he will enter the blazing fire,
and his wife [too], the firewood carrier,
with a rope of palm fibre around her neck.”
-al-Quran.info
“May the hands of Abu Lahab be ruined, and ruined is he.
His wealth will not avail him or that which he gained.
He will [enter to] burn in a Fire of [blazing] flame
And his wife [as well] - the carrier of firewood.
Around her neck is a rope of [twisted] fiber.”
- Quran.com
Imagine being the guy who gets singled out for cursing in the Qur’an. That’s some A-Grade notoriety there, as bad as, if not worse, that Alexander the Coppersmith from the Bible. Probably worse, since the whys and wherefores of Alexander the Coppersmith are, as far as I’m aware, lost to history, whereas thanks to the isnad tradition, we know who Abu Lahab and his wife were and why the Prophet saw fit to lambast him in text.
Abu Lahab was the Prophet’s uncle, and his wife was, apparently bitterly opposed to Islam. The rope of palm fibre, looking like an inference to a noose, is an ironic reference to her ostentatious necklaces that she was (in)famous for wearing. I don’t know what the reference to carrying firewood is supposed to be. That’s really about it, but it seems a good point to discuss “isnad”.
If the Qur’an is the raw revelation from God, then the Hadiths are interpretations of those revelations. In order to ensure that the hadiths are an accurate exegesis, they must be backed up by isnads (also “sanad”), which are corroborating statements that people allegedly heard concerning things mentioned in the Qur’anic surah. So, for example, in this one, anything pertaining to Abu Lahab and his wife form isnads to decipher this chapter.
I haven’t really referred to them or used them up until now because I’ve been less interested in providing an education in Islam and more in seeing what my interpretations of the Qur’an alone have been. With these shorter chapters I think some more context and background reading is needed in order to get anything other than “that’s nice”. But to be honest, I wonder how the reliability of these are tested. The ones related to this surah sound pretty much like malicious gossip (which the Qur’an elsewhere bans, e.g. The Apartments). For example, the claims that Mrs Abu Lahab would like to spread thorns outside the Prophet’s front door so that he’d stand on them on the morning. Or, to lift a quote directly from Wikipedia (poor practice I know) – “Rabiah bin Abbad ad- Dill related: "I was a young boy when I accompanied my father to the face of Dhul-Majaz. There I saw Muhammad who was exhorting the people, saying: 'O people, say: there is no deity but God, you will attain success.' Following behind him I saw a man, who was telling the people, `This fellow is a liar: he has gone astray from his ancestral faith.' I asked; who is he? The people replied: He is his uncle, Abu Lahab."”
But then, who is Rabiah bin Abbad ad-Dill, and how do we know he’s a reliable witness to something that happened to him in childhood? It doesn’t help that the Wikipedia pages on the Qur’an all look like they’ve been lifted whole cloth from Islamic websites, so their objectivity is somewhat suspect.
It doesn’t really matter, though, what the specifics are. Thorn spreading or not, evidently Abu Lahab and Mrs Abu Lahab did something to seriously annoy the Prophet, and in that sense it’s certainly noteworthy that they did enough to be mentioned by name (unlike, say, the gossiping women of The Apartments).
Infamy For Abu Lahab And His Wife.
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
Palm Fibre (al-Masad) 1-5
“Perish the hands of Abu Lahab, and perish he!
Neither his wealth availed him, nor what he had earned.
Soon he will enter the blazing fire,
and his wife [too], the firewood carrier,
with a rope of palm fibre around her neck.”
-al-Quran.info
“May the hands of Abu Lahab be ruined, and ruined is he.
His wealth will not avail him or that which he gained.
He will [enter to] burn in a Fire of [blazing] flame
And his wife [as well] - the carrier of firewood.
Around her neck is a rope of [twisted] fiber.”
- Quran.com
Imagine being the guy who gets singled out for cursing in the Qur’an. That’s some A-Grade notoriety there, as bad as, if not worse, that Alexander the Coppersmith from the Bible. Probably worse, since the whys and wherefores of Alexander the Coppersmith are, as far as I’m aware, lost to history, whereas thanks to the isnad tradition, we know who Abu Lahab and his wife were and why the Prophet saw fit to lambast him in text.
Abu Lahab was the Prophet’s uncle, and his wife was, apparently bitterly opposed to Islam. The rope of palm fibre, looking like an inference to a noose, is an ironic reference to her ostentatious necklaces that she was (in)famous for wearing. I don’t know what the reference to carrying firewood is supposed to be. That’s really about it, but it seems a good point to discuss “isnad”.
If the Qur’an is the raw revelation from God, then the Hadiths are interpretations of those revelations. In order to ensure that the hadiths are an accurate exegesis, they must be backed up by isnads (also “sanad”), which are corroborating statements that people allegedly heard concerning things mentioned in the Qur’anic surah. So, for example, in this one, anything pertaining to Abu Lahab and his wife form isnads to decipher this chapter.
I haven’t really referred to them or used them up until now because I’ve been less interested in providing an education in Islam and more in seeing what my interpretations of the Qur’an alone have been. With these shorter chapters I think some more context and background reading is needed in order to get anything other than “that’s nice”. But to be honest, I wonder how the reliability of these are tested. The ones related to this surah sound pretty much like malicious gossip (which the Qur’an elsewhere bans, e.g. The Apartments). For example, the claims that Mrs Abu Lahab would like to spread thorns outside the Prophet’s front door so that he’d stand on them on the morning. Or, to lift a quote directly from Wikipedia (poor practice I know) – “Rabiah bin Abbad ad- Dill related: "I was a young boy when I accompanied my father to the face of Dhul-Majaz. There I saw Muhammad who was exhorting the people, saying: 'O people, say: there is no deity but God, you will attain success.' Following behind him I saw a man, who was telling the people, `This fellow is a liar: he has gone astray from his ancestral faith.' I asked; who is he? The people replied: He is his uncle, Abu Lahab."”
But then, who is Rabiah bin Abbad ad-Dill, and how do we know he’s a reliable witness to something that happened to him in childhood? It doesn’t help that the Wikipedia pages on the Qur’an all look like they’ve been lifted whole cloth from Islamic websites, so their objectivity is somewhat suspect.
It doesn’t really matter, though, what the specifics are. Thorn spreading or not, evidently Abu Lahab and Mrs Abu Lahab did something to seriously annoy the Prophet, and in that sense it’s certainly noteworthy that they did enough to be mentioned by name (unlike, say, the gossiping women of The Apartments).
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