Blogging the Qur'an - Part 2 - al-Baqarah

The Cow

And so we continue with the second surah of the Qur’ân, the longest, and possibly most boring introduction to the Qur’ân ever. The compilation of the Qur’ân consists of the longer revelations received during Muhammad’s stay in Yathrib (known later as Madinah) at the start, with the shorter, more mystical revelations from Makkah (Mecca) towards the end. So if you want more of a decent experience perhaps you should read the Qur’ân backwards…

It opens with three ‘Arabic letters: alif lâm mîm. It has an asterisk next to it, linking it to a glossary at the back which states that “Twenty–nine chapters of the Qur’an begin with the names of Arabic letters in various combinations. These are the so–called ‘mysterious letters’ of the Qur’an whose meaning, according to most exegetes, is best left with God.” In other words, you can theorise, but muslims don’t have the slightest clue what they mean!

A Qur’ânic dictionary I have, compiled from various sources by ‘Abdul Mannân ‘Omar, differs in opinion on this. The entry for ‘alif lâm mîm’ refers to it as an ‘abbreviation for Anâ Allâh ‘Alam’, which means ‘I am allah the all–knowing’. He cites 13 different Islâmic scholars by name and claims they ‘all agree in interpreting the abbreviated letters’ in that way.

I have happed upon much more convincing theories, however. Theodor Nöldeke refers to the compilation of the Qur’ân’s bits and pieces by Zâid ibn Thabit into a structural form. Nödelke calls the letters monograms of the people from whom Zâid obtained the portions prefixed by them. E. H. Palmer (whose translation of the Qur’ân I’ve mentioned previously), notes this and adds in a footnote: “They may have been mere numerical or alphabetical labels for the boxes of scraps on which the original was written”, something I believe carries merit.

Most surahs which come prefaced with ‘mysterious letters’ start with a triumphant declaration along the lines of “By the Book!” or “These are the glorious verses sent down”, or something similar in sentiment. Perhaps the scraps belonged to various people (surah 42 carries two such monograms, the first of 2 letters, the next of 3 letters), and each featured a written introduction of some kind about it as a revelation from god that will prove the truth? As a quick couple of examples:

Surah 10 — Alif Lam Ra Behold the revelations of the Wise Book!
Surah 26 — Ta Sin Mim Behold the Revelations of the Manifest Book!

So… on with the whole surah! As I have mentioned, the layout in paragraphs of various lengths and styles makes it very easy to read, as does the language which sounds modern, and certainly doesn’t try for the mock–KJV thing a lot of early translations of the Qur’ân tried for.

Already I run into problems when it comes to ayat (verse) 2:26 (I think — he doesn’t have completely consistent numbering, unlike in the Bible {or Muhammad Abdel Haleem’s translation of the Qur’ân}, but numbers some of the verses every 5 or so). It discusses disbelievers, then goes on to add:

God thereby leads many astray,
And guides many.
But the dissolute alone He leads astray.

Do you see the problem with this? Despite repeated talk about the whisperings of Satan influencing people, this particular passage marks the start of many which clearly state that none other than allah leads disbelievers astray! Other passages talk about allah sealing up people’s hearts and eyes, and suchlike, to compound their error. Yes, occasional passages do mention how people deceive themeselves. Others say that false idols lead them astray, but many others claim that those who reject allah have no other patron or helper. Which should, of course, completely absolve unbelievers and apostates of their actions of disbelief.

This sort of Calvinist, predetermined future means that allah cannot possibly justify torturing people forever in Hell for something that it made them do, and definitely cannot hold them responsible for actions of kufr (disbelief)! Mind you, I believe that any god who would burn and torture people literally for all eternity (especially for something it made them do) cannot represent justice and most certainly cannot epitomise mercy in any way, as claimed otherwise repeatedly throughout the Qur’ân.

2:109 — “Forgive and pardon — that is,
until God reveals His command.”

This really struck a note with me because it sounds extremely sinister to my mind. And god certainly did do that later, what? Asking people to forgive… until it revealed commands of death and slaughter, such as Surah 9 opening without the basmala and an actual declaration of war against unbelievers present at that time.

2:111–2 — “He who surrenders his face to
God in all piety shall receive his reward from his Lord.”

I note that Tarif Khalidi has used the literal translation of the ‘Arabic when he mentions surrendering your ‘face’. It marks an idiom wherein the face represents the whole of the person. If you think about it, it does act as a conceptual metaphor for the rest of you. If someone says they will show you a picture of their child and presents you with a photo of someone’s knee, you wouldn’t feel you’d really seen that person, would you? Yet if you see a picture of the child’s face you feel rest assured that you’ve seen him or her.

For me, however, this phrase marks another thing prevalent in Islâm: slavery. I don’t refer to humans owning slaves, but humans themselves as slaves. ‘Islâm’ comes from a root word meaning ‘submission’ (not ‘peace’ as some claim). You see it in the first chapter of the Qur’ân where the faithful declare: “You alone we serve/worship”, in ‘Arabic iyyaka n‘abudu.

As you may well know, muslims must pray certain ritual prayers 5 times a day, more if they have to make up for missed ones (which usually happens because you have to start praying without missing any from puberty onwards), though they can appeal to allah with supplications (du‘a) at any time and in any language (though ‘Arabi remains the preferred option, naturally).

These prayers, called salah, exemplify the attitude of complete subservience and, rather more menacingly, engender this as a mindset through years of the same ritual repeated over and over again. I would go so far as to call it an insidious form of brainwashing.

The opening sections of the salah feature ritualised supplications to allah followed by a series of bowing and prostrations. The bowing (rukuu‘) almost makes you feel as though you bow in honour to the superiority of allah. You repeat a specific supplication 3 times (subhana rabbi al–‘azeem = How perfect my Lord is, the Supreme), bowing, humbled before the awesome power of god.

The prostration itself, the sujuud, I would liken to experiencing allah in all its majesty. You prostrate and surrender your face in front of the one who created it, and press it into the ground. The true might and majesty of allah forces you to obliterate your face completely and, like the masses around you, degrade yourself into nothing in front of your Lord: complete islâm, the ultimate in submission, and marking yourself as an ‘abd–allah, nothing more than a slave of allah without personal identity of your own — because the ready–made Islâmic answers to all queries must suffice as hallmarks of your own identity. I call this the epitome of abasement. And this applies to every single muslim who takes part in this ritual.

I don’t believe in it, and have certainly never experienced any such might or felt the presence of god, even when performing salah. As a brief, but related aside, Edward Said springs to mind in his essay ‘Consolidated Vision’ from his book Culture & Imperialism. From a section entitled ‘Narrative and Social Space’ he has this to say:

Redemption is found in the self–justifying practice of an idea or mission over time, in a structure that completely encircles and is revered by you, even though you set up the structure in the first place, ironically enough, and no longer study it closely because you take it for granted.

Coming across that really made me think of salah and what Muhammad made it into. Indeed, what every single muslim who partakes in it makes it into. This notion of ‘redemption’ goes a step over and above salvation. You don’t simply feel ‘saved’ by it, but you feel that you actively save yourself through repeating a ritualised structure over and over again… eventually purely for its own sake.

2:124 — Remember when his Lord tested Abraham…

If this represents allah speaking to someone about itself in the 3rd person it certainly does sound bizarre!

2:126 — Sanctify My House for those who circle around it…

This refers to the ritual of circumambulating the K‘abah, but the verse marks allah speaking to Abraham to go to Makkah to sanctify its special mosque. One question springs to mind: although a very old ritual that pre–dates Islâm, did people really circumambulate the K‘abah in Abraham’s time? In which case why did he need to go and sanctify it? The common legends of Islâm state that Adam built the K‘abah first, on god’s instructions, but it ended up damaged after the Flood (something from the Jewish and Christian stories, and actually based on Sumerian mythology), and so Abraham had to rebuild it.

To me this clearly sounds like a later interpolation retconned to the time of Muhammad to show that he simply followed in the tradition of Abraham.

2:138 — The hue of God is upon us! And what better hue
than God’s?
It is Him we worship.

OK, these words CLEARLY don’t come from god now, do they? Or has god decided to worship itself while crying out about how god’s hue has descended upon it? These sound more like the words of muslims, or perhaps even angels. Again, the word used for ‘worship’ comes from the ‘Arabic word meaning to ‘serve/venerate’.

Now here comes an interesting section! Passages 2:168–9 and 2:172 refer to dietary laws. Interrupting them, though, lie 2:170–1 and 2:173–6, which deal with suppressing god’s laws and following the wrong commands that your ancestors did. The passages as I’ve numbered them make complete sense when taken together as above, but when read in the context of the Qur’ân you have something about dietary law, then following the wrong law of your ancestors, then back to dietary law, then spiel about suppressing god’s law and going to Hell for it.

When I used to follow Islâm I would explain it as a majestic intrusion, a reminder of god’s power to strengthen the food laws. Seeing it now with a more critical eye, especially in light of Khalidi’s lovely prose and poetry paragraph–based arrangement, it seems obvious to me that the food laws intrude unannounced due to some human (and not divine!), rushed cut–and–paste job when piecing the verses together.

2:178–9 — O believers, retaliation for the slain is ordered
upon you…
The prospect of retaliation saves lives.

This, to me, sounds like using capital punishment as a deterrent. I can’t recall what the tafsir (interpretation) of the verse actually says about it. I’ll have to look that up I suppose, but for the moment I simply want to log my reactions to reading this translation of the Qur’ân.

2:183 — O believers, the fast is ordained upon you, as it was
ordained upon those who came before you — perhaps you will fear
God.

2:185 — The month of Ramadan is the one in which the Qur’ân was
sent down.

These two, in fact, mark very accurate translations of the ‘Arabi. I know that for 2:183 a lot of people translate ‘perhaps you will fear/obey’ as ‘for self–restraint’ in reference to fasting but the literal doesn’t say that at all. In fact it doesn’t even say the word ‘god’, but certainly implies that through its absence.

I picked these two lines because I used to believe one thing as a muslim, but now as an unbeliever I see these in a different light. I used to take the reference to ‘those who came before you’ who fasted as indicating Jews (who also fast). Now, though, after reading much of the Qur’ân’s canonical compilation probably taking a couple of hundred years, it sounds like a later interpolation to me. Certainly post–Muhammad. 2:185 give this away for me. I grew up amongst an Islâmic community hearing a lot about how allah sent down the Qur’ân during the month of Ramadan, hence why muslims hold it so dearly and fast during it.

As I learnt more about Islâm and read into it, asked questions, and so on, I discovered that the Qur’ân didn’t descend as a magical book in a month, but piecemeal, a few passages at a time, over a period of almost 23 years — and I sincerely doubt that all these revelations only took place during Ramadan!

So to me it sounds like a reminder of the religion of Islâm back in Muhammad’s time, and how people at the time of the passages quoted above should now fast as muslims used to do after the sacred month of the complete Qur’ân.

2:186 — I answer the prayer of him who prays when he prays to
Me.

Oh really? Then why doesn’t allah ever heal amputees?

So let them obey Me, and believe in Me —
perhaps they will be guided aright.

To me this sounds distinctly dodgy. Purportedly the words of allah, the passage deletes the speaker in the second ½ of the declaration. They will magically ‘be’ guided aright? Who guides these people? According to various passages of the Qur’ân, none other than allah guides people. So it leaves room for the possibility that those who believe in allah and obey it may receive guidance from allah… or indeed, they may not! Pretty fickle and random, I’d say. Surely if you give your all to your Lord and do everything it asks for then you should have proper guidance? Yet with Islâm it seems that you could still randomly go to Hell. Some ahadith (traditions) of Muhammad feature him quaking in fear and fervently praying to allah lest he go to Hell himself. You know, a chosen man of god, and yet fearing he may go to Hell? Doesn’t make sense to me.

2:191 — Apostasy by force is indeed more serious than slaying.

This passage ties in with 2:256’s declaration about no compulsion in religion. However, as attested by the contexts of the revelations, these lines actually apply ONLY to muslims, and how other people shouldn’t try to force them to abandon Islâm! They do not in any way endorse freedom of religion for everyone, and certainly do not allow a former believer to abandon Islâm.

At this point I would like to jump a few verses forward to #217 because it ties in very closely with the extract from 191 quoted above:

2:217 — ‘Forcing people into unbelief is a graver sin than
slaughter.’

I would like to point out that in both instances this refers to people trying to force muslims to give up Islâm (and not, for example, furnishing any rights to a muslim who wants to convert to Christianity) and also gives muslims the right to defend themselves to the death if people try to make them abandon their religion. The conclusion to ayat #217 goes like this:

He among you who retracts his religion and dies an unbeliever,
these are people whose works shall come to nothing in this world and
the next.
These are the people of the Fire, in which they shall abide for ever.

This mentions the muslim apostate, the murtad, literally one who ‘turns away’. As an ex–muslim, this remains a sore point with me because the supposedly merciful and just allah will banish me and others like me to eternal Hellfire simply for my beliefs, my thoughts. I don’t even have to have murdered or raped anyone, I will repeatedly die and come back to life, only to die again in eternal torment for what amounts to thought crimes and spiritually disagreeing with Muhammad’s view of god and how to live a morally sound life. Which, to me, makes the Islâmic hell nothing other than a political prison.

The line about how apostates’ ‘works shall come to nothing in this world’ carries a sinister edge to my ears. You could almost see in that room for punishment on earth, which means that in this sense you could view the Qur’ân as sanctioning execution of apostates from Islâm (something which the ahadith most definitely do).

Back to the ordered programme:

2:194 — A Holy Month will substitute for a Holy Month, and sacrilege
calls for retaliation.

I had to look this section up in an ‘Arabi Qur’ân (Khalidi’s version contains no actual parallel ‘Arabi text) and yes, the bit about calling for retaliation does represent a literal and accurate translation. A lot of muslims accuse those criticising the Qur’ân as taking verses out of context (though they think nothing of doing so themselves when it comes to the Jewish and Christian holy books), but if fundamentalist muslims took this out of context they could use it to… I dunno, politically assassinate poets who satirised Muhammad, or something.

2:195 — Do not, with your own hands, hurl yourself into
destruction.

Well, there we have it. One of two places in the Qur’ân that — at least in this (so far) excellent translation — sound like they condemn suicide.

2:196 onwards then refers to the Hajj, or pilgrimage that each muslim must make (if they have the capability to do so) at least once in their lifetime to visit the K‘abah in Makkah. However, the rules on what to do (fasting, not shaving your head until the animal sacrifice, etc.) end with this line: “So fear God and know that God is severe in punishment.” This represented a real WTF?! moment for me. It sounds like an utterly random and downright ludicrous conclusion on a discussion of pilgrimages. It makes the preceding rules EXTREMELY important, doesn’t it? Better get that head–shaving thing spot–on first time, eh?

2:201 — “Lord grant us good in this world and good
in the world hereafter, and spare us the torment of the Fire.”

Khalidi has written this section in quotation marks to denote it as something that allah sent to muslims for them to repeat. When I followed Islâm I used to love this phrase and recite it over and over again. Not for its meaning, no! When I fell in love with it I didn’t actually know what it meant. I learnt that later when I took more of an active interest in the Qur’ân and in the ‘Arabi language. No, I loved it for how it rolled off the tongue, with all its vocal assimilations and other effects. “Rabbana atina fid–dunya hasanata wa fil–akhirati, hasanata waqina ‘adhabannar.”

2:212–3 — For those who disbelieve, the present life has been made
to appear attractive… God bestows His bounty on whomsoever He wills,
uncountable…
Then God guided the believers to the truth regarding which they
differed, by His leave. God guides whomsoever He wills to a path that is
straight.

This almost numbed my mind. Not only do you encounter another passage in which allah freely admits to guiding people at random without consequence, but 212 actually states that allah actively makes this present life seem attractive to those who do not believe! Why would a just and merciful deity set out to deceive its own people (whose hearts none other than IT has sealed up!) like that? It makes no sense.

The latter ½ of verse 2:231 and all of verses 2:238–9 represent more random anomalies that don’t sit right in the context. They refer to the ritual salah prayers, but appear suddenly within passages referring to laws on how to enact divorce. It seems as though someone didn’t know where to put these passages so slotted them in a convenient place.

A theory I prefer, however, features the possibility that the intruding passages ended up written on the backs of the leaves/shoulderblades/whatever that had the divorce verses on them. So when canonising the work, they copied out a portion on divorce, flipped the page over, copied out the passage on prayer, went to the next page on divorce, etc.

I actually need to get to bed. I’ve worked on this since yesterday, actually, and I’ve flagged for quite a while now! Don’t worry, however, since Surah 2 marks the longest surah in the entire Qur’ân — it should gradually get shorter from here on out!

I’ll end with a few quick comments. As I’ve noted earlier in this post, 2:256, one of the most quoted passages in the Qur’ân, refers to muslims having the right to keep to their own religion without others trying to convert them, NOT the other way around! “There is no compulsion in religion. Right guidance has been distinguished from error.”

2:263–4 — A kind word followed by magnanimity is better than
charity followed by rudeness…
O believers, nullify not your alms–giving by demanding gratitude or
causing offence, like one who spends his wealth in order to flaunt
it.

I give the above passage a five star rating! In terms of its message, this represents the best thing I’ve encountered in the Qur’ân so far. It says, in other words, when you do a good deed, don’t take the piss! Don’t help someone out and then keep reminding them of it, making yourself out as some awesome hero. Better to give a kind word and then treat the other person graciously. Why don’t more passages like this appear more often in the Qur’ân?

I will conclude this section with the final words of the second Surah:

2:286 — Our Lord,
Take us not to task if we forget or err.
Our Lord,
Do not lay upon us a heavy burden, as You laid upon those who came
before us.
Our Lord,
Do not lay upon us what we have no power to bear.
Pardon us, forgive us, be merciful towards us.
You are our Patron, so grant us Your support against the
impious.

Now tell me… Do these sound like the words of god? Or of mortal man?

Blogging The Qur'an - Part 1 - al-Fatihah

The Opening

We start! Tarif Khalidi has rendered the opening basmala rather poetically and very generously, conveying the deeper meanings of the ‘Arabi words. He opens thusly:

In the name of God,
Merciful to all,
Compassionate to each!

This sounds rather good and certainly brings out the implied sense of the words ar–Rehman and ar–Rahim. However, as we shall soon discover as we travel through the Qur’ân, allah really doesn’t show compassion or mercy to all, despite repeated protestations that it does.

Since the surah itself consists of but a few lines I shall render the opening here:

Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds:
Merciful to all,
Compassionate to each!
Lord of the Day of Judgement.
It is You we worship, and upon You we call for help.
Guide us to the straight path,
The path of those upon whom Your grace abounds,
Not those upon whom anger falls,
Nor those who are lost.

Sounds lovely and a bit like the Lord’s prayer, doesn’t it? Yet herein we already encounter difficulty and trouble. The orthodox Islâmic view on the Qur’ân maintains it as the literal word of god. allah’s own words directly transcribed. As I explained in another, earlier post of mine, it actually amounts to third– or fourth–generational hearsay because allah told Gabriel to tell Muhammad, who then told his followers to memorise the passages or write them down on scraps lying around, which after Muhammad’s death the Khalifah (Caliph) had collected, and an official canonical copy made under the auspices of the 3rd Khalifah. So… not quite the direct word of allah.

As we shall discover, numerous passages sound as though Muhammad himself stated them. Others have little hedges and additions that try to circumvent this. Later redactors must have added words like “Say:” to the start of certain passages because they would otherwise sound like the words of a man, and not god itself. You can tell these form later interpolations because they sometimes missed a few, which I shall discuss in due course. You can usually identify those passages in English translations because the interpreter writes ‘say’ in parentheses, to denote the original ‘Arabi does NOT contain that word.

This opening represents a great summary and table of contents for the rest of the Qur’ân, and forms one of the passages that muslims who pray the ritual salah prayer recite at least 17 times a day. It OBVIOUSLY does not come from god, but marks a prayer that a human has recited with which to worship god. And yet the orthodox view consists of the fact that allah ‘sent down’ this prayer to give muslims something meaningful to recite over and over again. Sounds a bit arrogant, doesn’t it? Here, I’ll send you something with which to remember me, and it goes: “Praise to you, god of all the worlds!” Sheesh, how much of an ego trip can a divine entity go on?

Mind you, it actually sounds rather decent in this translation to me, and can sound extremely beautiful when recited. However, the last lines mask a veiled attack against other religions. You see, the otherwise normal–sounding plea to have allah guide muslims to the straight path and not the wrong ones refers in fact to Jews (upon whom god’s anger falls), and Christians (who have lost their way after deifying Jesus). Already you have hostility against other monotheistic religions, and stereotyping of peoples. What a start to a Holy Book…

Blogging the Qur'an

So I’ve decided to jump on the bandwagon of blogging the Qur’ân, which a lot of folks have done and continue to do. I had ordered a specific ‘new’ translation of one version for fairly cheap from amazon.co.uk by a chap called Tarif Khalidi. He wrote a book called The Muslim Jesus, which collects sayings ascribed to and actions by Jesus as perceived in Islâmic history down the ages. His introduction repays careful reading and approaches the subject in a very objective and secular, yet respectful way.

And so I decided I would like to blog my reactions to the Qur’ân, note my thoughts on it, and suchlike as per this particular translation. It looks beautiful in hardback, by the way:



I have only started reading its introduction, and already it has impressed me with its detailed history of the context of the ‘revelations’, and the fact that Khalidi does point to certain problems with the traditional muslim narrative about the Qur’ân’s descent.

My favourite English translations of the Qur’ân come from Muhammad Abdel Haleem, which remains eminently readable, filled with detailed notes and discussions on the meaning of words, as well as a few corrections of misinterpreted words, and one by E. H. Palmer, which captures something of the fierce eloquence of the ‘Arabic original (though sometimes renders it incomprehensible).

I’ll see how I go with Khalidi’s version!

Allah has said…

challengeyoursoul.com wrote: allah has said Let me stop you right there. Of course people say that the Qur’ân represents the true word of god but it clearly doesn’t. Plenty of passages obviously come from a human since they talk about allah in a reverential way. Even if they didn’t (which they do), you still can’t say ‘allah has said’ because allah has not said. The correct phraseology would go a little something like this: “Allah told Gabriel told Muhammad to have his followers commit this passage to memory or write it down on the scapulæ of oxen or the shoulderblades of camels until a committee appointed by the third rightful khalif could collect it in order to stem the spread of alternative rescensions.” Once you start to use that phrase every time you want to write ‘allah said’ (all of it factually accurate according to muslim sources) you will see how the Qur’ân sounds less like the word of allah and more like fourth generational hearsay.

A Treatise Against the Punishment and Execution of Apostates

1. A person forms a belief when (s)he reaches a conclusion after a specific observation of events, ideas in action, natural phenomena, and suchlike. This person does not form this belief purely out of spite, vindictiveness or immorality, but by sincere contention. I therefore consider it unreasonable, unrealistic and utterly fascistic and totalitarian to punish someone for a conclusion they cannot help but reach.

2. Deciding that Islâm carries as much truth as any other man–made religion, and thereby labelling it ‘false’ after believing it as true, represents nothing more than a change of belief.

3. Agreeing with the concept of execution for apostates means advocating (state–sanctioned) murder of people who reject what they now believe as nothing more than legends, fairytales and ancient fables.

4. Receiving punishment for changing your belief means that an ex–muslim ends up compelled by force to remain — at least for show — in that specific belief. This I would describe as nothing other than compulsion, and renders the famous ayat at 2:256 in the Qur’ân patently false.

5. Death for apostates merely extends the charade of Islâm — utter hypocrisy, and the Qur’ân itself denounces hypocrisy. Killing in the name of hypocrisy simply turns fundamentalism into another idol, and sacrificing apostates to this idol represents ‘shirk’ — worshipping others as God, and effectively dismantling the tawhîd of Allâh.

6. Punishing someone with execution for apostasy from Islâm (or any other cult) remains, in my opinion, a fundamentally despicable concept. It displays a complete and shocking lack of empathy and understanding as to what motivates someone’s convictions (in other words, something they cannot help but believe, and not necessarily a free choice).

7. This makes it a complete attack on freedom of thought, on freedom of speech and as such we, as rational and straight–thinking people, must speak out and act against it wherever we encounter it. It deserves nothing else but utter contempt and scorn.

8. Brutally murdering a murtad does not prevent harm in the slightest. The affected victim’s family and friends, his/her workplace, and so on, all lose someone dear or essential to them simply because that person had the audacity to believe something and change their mind.

9. Additionally, how does this affect a person’s position in the (I believe non–existent) Afterlife? Executing the apostate will not absolve him/her of supposed sinfulness, which means (s)he will not go to heaven. Threatening someone with death does not cause them suddenly to change their deep–seated philosophical views. Any claim to the contrary by the apostate in question amounts to blatant insincerity and, therefore, we can discard the sentiment as meaningless.

10. I submit that to label a change in a belief as commensurate with treason represents the height of illogicality. It indicates nothing other than a dismissal of a previously held philosophical position. When comparing apostasy to treason, the only proportionate analogy comes with a person renouncing his/her citizenship of any nation — hardly an act worthy of capital punishment.

11. A final point, in the form of two queries: in a secular and liberal democratic society (in which the general belief and value of democracy and libertarianism binds the state together), does a person disagreeing with democracy or libertarianism constitute having committed treason? Should such a person suffer threats of capital punishment?

“Happy New Year!” (from a Muharram Murtad)

1st of Muharram 1429 AH — the start of the new year according to the Islamic calendar. Though, of course, due to bickering between parties and inability to resolve sightings of the moon it could take place tomorrow… At any rate, New Year, New Attitude, New Resolution, New Actions. I figured it would prove the perfect time to announce my apostasy from Islam. I went onto my favourite muslim forum (mainly due to some of the posters there), Ummah.com and announced I had turned murtad.

I simply don’t believe. Not only in Islam as a divinely–sanctioned religion, but in divinity altogether. I have read too much, seen too much the manmade origins of each religion, felt no divine presence throughout my life, seen the way nature doesn’t need a conscious guiding hand… I have seen and felt all this too much to give any credence to commonly–held notions of Divinity and Theism.

Some of the members there expressed sadness and shock, others incandescent rage and sneering hostility — and most of the latter came when I pointed out that the founder of Islam, Muhammad, sanctioned the death of apostates from Islam. At that point people acted as though I’d ‘done a Rushdie’ and one of the moderators closed my thread quicksmart. It interests me that the ultimate act of betrayal and evil (I had announced I do not believe in God) met with some shocked reactions, but only when I mentioned Muhammad did the moderator close my thread. Odd, that, don’t you think?

Only one of the members really touched me with her passion, her sincere regret, and her gentle and patient responses to my posts. A pity none of the others acted more like she did.

I don’t regret leaving Islam: I realise that I’d never lived particularly religiously though I’d tried damn hard over the past few years — but not hard enough. I didn’t pray the mandatory Salah prayers 5 times a day. In fact, I used to joke about myself as a ‘2 Salah Man’: ‘Eid–ul–Fitr and ‘Eid–ul–Adha! Needless to say, comments like that have never gone down well. Of course, I did used to preface any act of eating by reciting the basmala, and I catch myself occasionally doing so now, but those acts simply represent phrases and actions I’ve inculcated in myself but wish to abandon now.

A chap on another forum has tasked me with a list of actions I should complete in order to continue moving on in my life, eg. making a pot of chili and eating it, watching the sun rise, and suchlike. None of it far removed from the way I’ve lived my life normally — but I suppose working through the list will provide me with something specific to look forward to and even push me out of my comfort zone (one of the items involves telling an attractive stranger on the street that I think she looks beautiful).

I suppose I feel a loss of group identity in that I’ve grown up in a quite secular but nonetheless Muslim South Asian community, but I shall dig deep inside me and try to transcend that loss by relying on the force of my own beliefs and personal identity.

On with the programme…

“Break their bonds asunder…”

Each radical religious break from convention has come due to social, economic, political, and other factors at that time. This makes each such religion a contextually grounded, living, breathing response to the circumstances from which it emerged. Sometimes it drew upon and added to thoroughly documented traditions of the time (Judaism, for instance, with the God of Micah seen as the same as the God of Noah despite hugely differing portrayals of the Deity). At other times these religious responses arose from and then broke away completely (such as with Christianity), or emerged from totally different circumstances and drew upon elements already present (such as Islam).

Jews documented their nationalist history extensively (though most likely from their captivity in Babylon onwards, and thus drawing upon Babylonian myths and legends too) and certainly knew their religion thoroughly. They proved eloquent in these matters and consummate at exegesis, midrash and religious debate.

So when people presented Yeshua‘ (Jesus) as THE Messiah expected by the Jews they had a fight on their hands, not least of which because nothing in Judaism predicted a messiah who would die before emancipating them. Earliest Christians naturally came from Jewish stock. Accordingly they drew upon Jewish history (they had to so that others would engage them in debate). Gentile Christians, therefore, had to subsume the entire Tanakh as their Old Testament in order to establish Jesus’ place within history — only to break him away from it.

Of course, Muhammad had a much more radical, even grandiloquent, solution: simply to declare that the Jews and Christians had corrupted their holy books and had strayed from their true path. Therefore he had no need to argue with them on their own religious grounds.

“Make Spacious His Grave…

…and illuminate it for him.”

— extract from a supplication to Allah for the deceased (technically only recited when closing his/her eyes).

Uncle dead. All gone now. Mother’s last remaining brother. Only one in England — others used to live in Pakistan. Family feud. Not seen him or his family in more than 6+ years. Sudden call around midnight today. Sudden? Well, 5 missed calls on my mobile and 4 on the house phone. Uncle remained in hospital since Wednesday the 18th, ill with heart trouble. 70+ years of age. In & out. Seemed recovered on Saturday. Then… gone.

My mother didn’t even know he’d gone to hospital. They hadn’t told her. Mind you, he’d never even told her when his daughter got married. She had to hear it from other people in our local community. When my mother saw his face (he lay on his bed in the hospital after having passed on), she burst into tears again (had cried as I took her and my Dad there by car) and screamed at him (I translate this from Urdu):

“THIS is it? You couldn’t even bring yourself to speak to me for the rest of your life, and now you call me? For … this??”

Today his son Naveed made the funeral arrangements, helped by a friend of his in the know. Islamically we bury the deceased within 3 days, usually within a day. No point hanging around, I suppose. When Naveed’s mate came into the room at the hospital last night and told my aunt that he’d sort the preparations and get my uncled buried the next afternoon she started, suddenly coming out of her bubble. “That soon?” she asked. Poor thing. I don’t like her, but she suffered from cancer these past few years and my uncle took complete care of her — he devoted himself entirely to her to the point he didn’t even leave the house for weeks at a time.

Her daughter, my cousin Sarah, sat there with her trying to convince her that he would never return. “He’s gone, mum!” she kept saying. “He’s not coming back!” My aunt hadn’t cried ‘properly’, apparently, and Sarah wanted her to let it all out so the grieving and healing processes could begin.

Naveed had to remain strong and take care of matters such as the funeral arrangements, as well as comforting the overwhelmingly large proportion of female members of his family. But a couple of times he cried out in grief and then quickly wiped his eyes.

The worst such incident came when we had to bathe my uncle’s body this morning at the mosque, in preparation for his Islamic burial. My cousin, his 2 brothers–in–law, and I lifted the enshrouded body onto the table where we would wash him. When we uncovered him (except for the obligatory covering of men from navel to knee) my cousin Naveed took one look at his Dad’s face and burst into tears. He quickly suppressed his outburst though, and we took to washing him all over. I helped out as best as I could (I even had to clean his genitals), and we included the ritual ablutions, as though preparing him for prayer.

His body felt so heavy, and cold (undoubtedly from his night in the mortuary). His head had gone purple from the ears down — all that blood pooling due to gravity and no heartbeat to circulate it all. Little holes in the table through which the water drained left purple marks all over his back. Marks which did not go away. The solidity of his body when I touched, cleaning him, his arms stiff and crossed over his chest (in Islam we bury people with their arms straight by their side), and remaining that way as we tried in vain to straighten them, all created a weird sort of bond between us. I can’t even get my head around it, let alone attempt to describe it.

After we cleaned him, put him in his coffin for the open casket viewing, we left to ritually purify ourselves before prayer. In situations like these we always have what we called a ‘Janaaza’, a funeral prayer. We do this with the casket in front of us, but we remain standing during the prayer; we do not bow as we do ordinarily when praying to Allah.

They buried him in a cemetary in Almondbury. I even helped to shovel in soil onto him. He has gone for good now. Until the Day of Judgement, so they say…

What now?

Shahadah from a Jewish Perspective

The Muslim declaration of faith (Shahadah = testimony, and from the same root as ‘shaheed’ which you can roughly translate as ‘martyr’) runs thus: “There is no divinity but Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah”. At one time I used to wonder about this — question why we took the name of the Prophet alongside that of God. Why, if we submitted to God, did we have to declare our allegiance to a man chosen by God to spread the word? It felt almost like ‘shirk’ to me (the association of partners with God).

Eventually I came to accept this as the best summation of our religion of Islam. We submitted wholly to Allah in the ‘latest format’ as preached by Muhammad . It suddenly made sense to me. We simply declared our worship of Allah and how it related to the final message delivered to the Seal of the Prophets.

But then I read this today, and some of the old thoughts (…and doubts) came flooding back:

clipped from http://www.ummah.com/forum/showthread.php?t=99506&page=3 History Yiddishe Kopf Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: USA Posts: 5,048 From this Jewish perspective, the elevation of prophets, and in Islam, specifically of Muhammed, to a "superhuman" status (sinless, perfect, etc.)--the elevation of his name to be said adjacent to Allah/G-d in the Muslim's declaration of faith (i.e. "There is no god but G-d and Muhammed is His prophet"), the examples of world-riots and deaths through perceived "insult" to a man, even a revered man of G-d, is "associating partners with G-d", is "worship", is blasphemous ("shirk"). Regardless of what is claimed to the contrary, the actions of Muslims define their beliefs (which is true of all human beings).

Always doubts. My entire life seems plagued with one consistency only: Doubt about everything. Does my entire life, my whole being, my religious feelings, my love for my family, my fiancée, my belief in myself… does all of it centre on an empty void of Doubt? Does everything = Doubt to me?

Boxing & Chess vs Islam = FIGHT!

So it turns out that edicts issued by scholars of my religion, Islam, condemn my twin interests, that of boxing and chess, as ‘haraam’ (forbidden). After long discussion on one particular forum, someone concluded that the Prophet himself condemned any ‘sport’ which involved hitting the face, but endorsed wrestling.

My comments asking for further clarification re: the rules of and reasons behind wrestling have received no response. Almost a week later. Hmmm… (“Things that make you go—”)

clipped from forum.mpacuk.org kashf al–Haqq Quote: Originally Posted by Peacenik True wrestling … does not involve harmful injury to the other party. Then what does it involve? Getting sweaty and touching other men, lying on top of them? True wrestling involves strikes and submission holds — all of which cause injury to the other party, or at least intended injury in order to force the other party to tap out or end up so beaten they can’t tap out (eg striking them to a point that you can pin them). __________________ It is not the eyes that are blind, but the hearts (22:46)