Back in 2007 and 2008, I ran a weekly feature at my website Jihad Watch [1]: “Blogging the Qur’an.” Now, with the Obama administration repeatedly reiterating the claim that Islam is fundamentally peaceful and that promoting its true and benign face will ultimately conquer the global jihad, it is time to revive it.
Here at PJ Media I’ll be presenting a new, revised version of the series.
The jihadists quote the Qur’an frequently and portray themselves as those who are following “pure Islam,” the genuine article as it is taught in the Qur’an and Islamic tradition. Yet Islamic groups in the West — such as the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations — insist that the jihadis are misusing the Qur’an, and that non-Muslim analysts who trace the jihadis’ activity to the Qur’an are “cherry-picking” violent passages and quoting them “out of context.”
The Obama administration has crafted its entire Middle East foreign policy based on this claim.
[2]
So we’re going to read the Qur’an. All of it. Nothing “cherry-picked” or “out of context.”
And we’re going to invite elected officials, journalists, and other newsmakers who have made public claims about the nature of Islam to debate and read along with us.
The inspiration for this, back in 2007, was David Plotz’s series on Slate, “Blogging the Bible [3].” But this series will be fundamentally different than that one: rather than just write about what I think or feelabout a certain passage, as Plotz did regarding his own thoughts, I will refer to commentaries — all Muslim ones — on the Qur’an.
I’ll try to explain how mainstream Muslims who study the Qur’an will understand any given passage.
This is important, and is the only point in doing this: I will be posting on what the major translations and commentaries used by the world’s Muslims have to say about the Qur’an.
Not what I say, not what the Obama administration says, not what the terror-tied CAIR says, not what John Kerry says.
But the blizzard of translations made by Muslims for Muslims who don’t speak Arabic — who are the great majority around the world today — as well as to proselytize among non-Muslims belies that claim.
Two of the most popular and widely used English translations of the Qur’an were written by Muslims: Abdullah Yusuf Ali, and Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall. Those can be found here [5], along with four other translations by Muslims and four by non-Muslims.
Unlike Jesus, Muhammad did not originate his message, but only served as its conduit. The Qur’an is, for Muslims, the pure Word of Allah.
They point to its poetic character as proof that it did not originate with Muhammad, whom they say was illiterate, but with the Almighty, who dictated every word. The average Muslim believes that everything in the book is absolutely true and that its message is applicable in all times and places.
This is a stronger claim than Christians make for the Bible.
When Christians of whatever tradition say that the Bible is “God’s Word,” they don’t mean that God spoke it word-for-word and that it’s free of all human agency — instead, there is the idea of “inspiration,” that God breathed through human authors, working through their human knowledge to communicate what he wished to communicate.
But for Muslims, the Qur’an is more than inspired.
There is not and could not be a passage in the Qur’an like I Corinthians 1:14-17 in the New Testament, where Paul says: “I am thankful that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius; lest any one should say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any one else.)”
Paul’s faulty memory demonstrates the human element of the New Testament, which for Christians does not negate, but exists alongside the texts’ inspired character. But in the Qur’an, Allah is the only speaker throughout (with a few notable exceptions).
Allah himself tells him this, in the Qur’an itself: “And indeed, it is a mighty Book. Falsehood cannot approach it from before it or from behind it; [it is] a revelation from a [Lord who is] Wise and Praiseworthy.” (41:41-2). It is “an Arabic Qur’an, without any deviance that they might become righteous.” (39:28). In short, “it is the truth of certainty.” (69:51). Allah, speaking in a royal plural that does not, according to Muslim theologians, compromise his absolute unity, proclaims that “indeed, it is We who sent down the Qur’an and indeed, We will be its guardian.” (15:9).
Also, it has no overarching narrative unity, although there are smaller narrative units within many chapters. With the exception of the brief first chapter (sura), its 114 chapters are arranged from the longest to the shortest.
In the longer chapters, stories are told, laws are given, and warnings to unbelievers are issued, but in them and throughout the book, there is no chronological or narrative continuity. The shorter suras, meanwhile, particularly those near the end of the book that run only a few lines, are poetic and arresting warnings of the impending divine judgment. The longer ones, by contrast, are often ponderous and repetitive — and filled also with similar warnings against unbelievers.
By the end of this journey, I believe we will see more clearly what makes the jihadists tick — and also perhaps understand what we can and must do to resist them.
In the original edition of this series I wrote: “I welcome feedback and criticism in the comments section, in e-mail correspondence, and on other blogs, and will answer questions and respond to the most thoughtful comments, criticism, and challenges.” Above all, I welcome criticism and feedback from Muslims who dispute the understandings of the Qur’an that I will report in this series.
Hamas-linked CAIR says that it’s committed to “dialogue.” Yet neither they nor their allies ever engage in honest dialogue and discussion with those whom they consider their foes.
I invite them here yet again to that discussion.
Here at PJ Media I’ll be presenting a new, revised version of the series.
Why Read the Qur’an
To understand the motives and goals of Islamic jihad terrorists, a good place to start is to explore what they themselves say about why they’re doing what they’re doing, and what they want. That leads directly to the Qur’an (or Koran), the Islamic holy book.The jihadists quote the Qur’an frequently and portray themselves as those who are following “pure Islam,” the genuine article as it is taught in the Qur’an and Islamic tradition. Yet Islamic groups in the West — such as the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations — insist that the jihadis are misusing the Qur’an, and that non-Muslim analysts who trace the jihadis’ activity to the Qur’an are “cherry-picking” violent passages and quoting them “out of context.”
The Obama administration has crafted its entire Middle East foreign policy based on this claim.
[2]
Obama speaking at Al-Azhar University, Cairo, 2009
From Nigeria to Iran, the administration believes that promoting the “in-context,” complete message of the Qur’an will bring about a peaceful, safer Middle East.So we’re going to read the Qur’an. All of it. Nothing “cherry-picked” or “out of context.”
And we’re going to invite elected officials, journalists, and other newsmakers who have made public claims about the nature of Islam to debate and read along with us.
The inspiration for this, back in 2007, was David Plotz’s series on Slate, “Blogging the Bible [3].” But this series will be fundamentally different than that one: rather than just write about what I think or feelabout a certain passage, as Plotz did regarding his own thoughts, I will refer to commentaries — all Muslim ones — on the Qur’an.
I’ll try to explain how mainstream Muslims who study the Qur’an will understand any given passage.
This is important, and is the only point in doing this: I will be posting on what the major translations and commentaries used by the world’s Muslims have to say about the Qur’an.
Not what I say, not what the Obama administration says, not what the terror-tied CAIR says, not what John Kerry says.
———————-
Written by Allah vs. Written by Men
Here [4] is a good Arabic/English text. In Islamic theology, the Qur’an is essentially and inherently an “Arabic Qur’an” (as the Qur’an describes itself repeatedly: see 12:2; 20:113; 39:28; 41:3; 41:44; 42:7; and 43:3). In Islamic belief, the Qur’an’s meaning can be rendered in other languages, but those translations are not the Qur’an, which when no longer in Arabic is no longer itself. Some Muslim scholars even claim that the Qur’an cannot be fully understood except in Arabic.But the blizzard of translations made by Muslims for Muslims who don’t speak Arabic — who are the great majority around the world today — as well as to proselytize among non-Muslims belies that claim.
Two of the most popular and widely used English translations of the Qur’an were written by Muslims: Abdullah Yusuf Ali, and Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall. Those can be found here [5], along with four other translations by Muslims and four by non-Muslims.
What Is the Qur’an?
The Qur’an is, according to Islamic thought, a perfect copy of a book that has existed eternally with Allah, the one true God, in Paradise: “Indeed, We have made it an Arabic Qur’an that you might understand. And indeed it is, in the Mother of the Book with Us, exalted and full of wisdom.” (43:3-4). According to Islamic tradition, the angel Gabriel revealed it in sections to Muhammad (570-632), an Arabian merchant. Like Jesus, Muhammad left the written recording of his messages to others.Unlike Jesus, Muhammad did not originate his message, but only served as its conduit. The Qur’an is, for Muslims, the pure Word of Allah.
They point to its poetic character as proof that it did not originate with Muhammad, whom they say was illiterate, but with the Almighty, who dictated every word. The average Muslim believes that everything in the book is absolutely true and that its message is applicable in all times and places.
This is a stronger claim than Christians make for the Bible.
When Christians of whatever tradition say that the Bible is “God’s Word,” they don’t mean that God spoke it word-for-word and that it’s free of all human agency — instead, there is the idea of “inspiration,” that God breathed through human authors, working through their human knowledge to communicate what he wished to communicate.
But for Muslims, the Qur’an is more than inspired.
There is not and could not be a passage in the Qur’an like I Corinthians 1:14-17 in the New Testament, where Paul says: “I am thankful that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius; lest any one should say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any one else.)”
Paul’s faulty memory demonstrates the human element of the New Testament, which for Christians does not negate, but exists alongside the texts’ inspired character. But in the Qur’an, Allah is the only speaker throughout (with a few notable exceptions).
Only Allah Speaks in the Qur’an
There is no human element. The book is the pure and unadulterated divine word.Allah himself tells him this, in the Qur’an itself: “And indeed, it is a mighty Book. Falsehood cannot approach it from before it or from behind it; [it is] a revelation from a [Lord who is] Wise and Praiseworthy.” (41:41-2). It is “an Arabic Qur’an, without any deviance that they might become righteous.” (39:28). In short, “it is the truth of certainty.” (69:51). Allah, speaking in a royal plural that does not, according to Muslim theologians, compromise his absolute unity, proclaims that “indeed, it is We who sent down the Qur’an and indeed, We will be its guardian.” (15:9).
——————————
Understanding the Qur’an Requires Knowledge of Muslim Traditions
Yet even though the Qur’an says it includes “clarification for all things” (16:89), reading it is not always easy. Since so much of it consists of Allah speaking with Muhammad, it is often rather like listening in on a conversation between two people you don’t know, talking about events with which you were uninvolved. Even though a surprisingly large amount of what the Qur’an says is said more than once, still often the reader can’t figure out what’s being said, or why, without reference to Muslim tradition.Also, it has no overarching narrative unity, although there are smaller narrative units within many chapters. With the exception of the brief first chapter (sura), its 114 chapters are arranged from the longest to the shortest.
In the longer chapters, stories are told, laws are given, and warnings to unbelievers are issued, but in them and throughout the book, there is no chronological or narrative continuity. The shorter suras, meanwhile, particularly those near the end of the book that run only a few lines, are poetic and arresting warnings of the impending divine judgment. The longer ones, by contrast, are often ponderous and repetitive — and filled also with similar warnings against unbelievers.
By the end of this journey, I believe we will see more clearly what makes the jihadists tick — and also perhaps understand what we can and must do to resist them.
In the original edition of this series I wrote: “I welcome feedback and criticism in the comments section, in e-mail correspondence, and on other blogs, and will answer questions and respond to the most thoughtful comments, criticism, and challenges.” Above all, I welcome criticism and feedback from Muslims who dispute the understandings of the Qur’an that I will report in this series.
Hamas-linked CAIR says that it’s committed to “dialogue.” Yet neither they nor their allies ever engage in honest dialogue and discussion with those whom they consider their foes.
I invite them here yet again to that discussion.
Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/a-worldwide-must-read-robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran/
URLs in this post:
[1] Jihad Watch: http://www.jihadwatch.org/
[2] Image: http://pjmedia-new.pjmedia.netdna-cdn.com/user-content/1/files/2015/03/obama-cairo21.jpg
[3] Blogging the Bible: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/blogging_the_bible/2006/05/blogging_the_bible.html
[4] Here: http://quran.com/
[5] here: http://www.quranbrowser.com/
The Fatiha (Opening) is the first sura (chapter) of the Qur’an, and most common prayer of Islam. If you’re a pious Muslim who prays the five requisite daily prayers of Islam, you will recite the Fatiha seventeen times in the course of those prayers.
According to an Islamic tradition, the Muslim prophet Muhammad said that the Fatiha surpassed anything revealed by Allah (“the God” in Arabic, and the word for God used by Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews, as well as Muslims) in the Torah, the Gospel, or the rest of the Qur’an. And indeed, it efficiently and eloquently encapsulates many of the principal themes of the Qur’an and Islam in general: Allah as the “Lord of the worlds,” who alone is to be worshiped and asked for help, the merciful judge of every soul on the Last Day.
In Islamic theology, Allah is the speaker of every word of the Qur’an. Some have found it strange that Allah would say something like “Praise is to Allah, Lord of the worlds,” but Islamic tradition holds that Allah revealed this prayer to Muhammad early in his career as a prophet (which began in the year 610 AD, when he received his first revelation from Allah through the angel Gabriel — a revelation that is now contained in the Qur’an’s 96th chapter), so that the Muslims would know how to pray.
[2]
It is for its last two verses that the Fatiha is of most concern to non-Muslims.
The final two verses of the Fatiha ask Allah:
Ibn Kathir’s understanding of this passage is not a lone “extremist” interpretation. In fact, most Muslim commentators believe that the Jews are those who have earned Allah’s wrath and the Christians are those who have gone astray.
This is the view of Tabari, Zamakhshari, the Tafsir al-Jalalayn [5], the Tanwir al-Miqbas min Tafsir Ibn Abbas [6], and Ibn Arabi, as well as Ibn Kathir. One contrasting, but not majority view, is that of Nisaburi, who says that “those who have incurred Allah’s wrath are the people of negligence, and those who have gone astray are the people of immoderation.”
Wahhabis drew criticism a few years back for adding “such as the Jews” and “such as the Christians” into parenthetical glosses on this passage in Qur’ans printed in Saudi Arabia.
Some Western commentators imagined that the Saudis originated this interpretation, and indeed the whole idea of Qur’anic hostility toward Jews and Christians. They found it inconceivable that Muslims all over the world would learn as a matter of course that the central prayer of their faith anathematizes Jews and Christians.
But unfortunately, this interpretation is venerable and mainstream in Islamic theology. The printing of the interpretation in parenthetical glosses into a translation would be unlikely to affect Muslim attitudes, since the Arabic text is always and everywhere normative in any case, and since so many mainstream commentaries contain the idea that the Jews and Christians are being criticized here.
Seventeen times a day, by the pious.
Please note that I am not saying that the anti-Jewish and anti-Christian interpretation of the Fatiha is the “correct” one. While I don’t believe that religious texts are infinitely malleable and can be made to mean whatever the reader wants them to mean, as some apparently do, in this case Nisaburi’s reading has as much to commend it as the other: there is nothing in the text itself that absolutely compels one to believe that it is talking about Jews and Christians. And it is noteworthy that in his massive and evocatively named 30-volume commentary on the Qur’an, Fi Zilal al-Qur’an (In the Shade of the Qur’an), the twentieth-century jihad theorist Sayyid Qutb doesn’t mention Jews or Christians in connection with this passage.
At the same time, however, the idea in Islam that Jews have earned Allah’s anger and Christians have gone astray doesn’t depend on this passage alone. The Jews have earned Allah’s “wrath upon wrath” by rejecting Muhammad (2:87-90), and the Christians have gone astray by holding to the divinity of Christ: “They have certainly disbelieved who say, ‘Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary’”(5:72).
The Hadith, the traditions of the words and deeds of Muhammad and the early Muslims, also contains material linking Jews to Allah’s anger and Christians to his curse, which resulting from their straying from the true path. (The Jews are accursed also, according to Qur’an 2:89, and both are accursed according to 9:30). One hadith recounts that an early Muslim, Zaid bin ‘Amr bin Nufail, in his travels met with Jewish and Christian scholars. The Jewish scholar told him, “You will not embrace our religion unless you receive your share of Allah’s Anger,” and the Christian said, “You will not embrace our religion unless you get a share of Allah’s Curse.” Zaid, needless to say, became a Muslim.
In light of these and similar passages it shouldn’t be surprising that many Muslim commentators have understood the Fatiha to be referring to Jews and Christians.
According to an Islamic tradition, the Muslim prophet Muhammad said that the Fatiha surpassed anything revealed by Allah (“the God” in Arabic, and the word for God used by Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews, as well as Muslims) in the Torah, the Gospel, or the rest of the Qur’an. And indeed, it efficiently and eloquently encapsulates many of the principal themes of the Qur’an and Islam in general: Allah as the “Lord of the worlds,” who alone is to be worshiped and asked for help, the merciful judge of every soul on the Last Day.
In Islamic theology, Allah is the speaker of every word of the Qur’an. Some have found it strange that Allah would say something like “Praise is to Allah, Lord of the worlds,” but Islamic tradition holds that Allah revealed this prayer to Muhammad early in his career as a prophet (which began in the year 610 AD, when he received his first revelation from Allah through the angel Gabriel — a revelation that is now contained in the Qur’an’s 96th chapter), so that the Muslims would know how to pray.
[2]It is for its last two verses that the Fatiha is of most concern to non-Muslims.
———————————-
A Shi’ite imam, Husham Al-Husainy, ignited controversy back in 2007 by paraphrasing this passage during a prayer at a Democratic National Committee winter meeting, giving the impression that he was praying that the assembled pols convert to Islam [3]. Then Imam Yusuf Kavakci of the Dallas Central Mosque prayed the Fatiha at the Texas State Senate, giving rise to the same concerns [4].The final two verses of the Fatiha ask Allah:
Guide us to the straight path, the path of those upon whom You have bestowed favor, not of those who have evoked [Your] anger or of those who are astray.The traditional Islamic understanding of this is that the “straight path” is Islam — cf. Islamic apologist John Esposito’s book Islam: The Straight Path — while the path “of those who have evoked Allah’s anger” are the Jews, and those who have gone “astray” are the Christians.
——————————
The classic Qur’anic commentator Ibn Kathir explains that “the two paths He described here are both misguided,” and that those “two paths are the paths of the Christians and Jews, a fact that the believer should beware of so that he avoids them. The path of the believers is knowledge of the truth and abiding by it. In comparison, the Jews abandoned practicing the religion, while the Christians lost the true knowledge. This is why ‘anger’ descended upon the Jews, while being described as ‘led astray’ is more appropriate of the Christians.”Ibn Kathir’s understanding of this passage is not a lone “extremist” interpretation. In fact, most Muslim commentators believe that the Jews are those who have earned Allah’s wrath and the Christians are those who have gone astray.
This is the view of Tabari, Zamakhshari, the Tafsir al-Jalalayn [5], the Tanwir al-Miqbas min Tafsir Ibn Abbas [6], and Ibn Arabi, as well as Ibn Kathir. One contrasting, but not majority view, is that of Nisaburi, who says that “those who have incurred Allah’s wrath are the people of negligence, and those who have gone astray are the people of immoderation.”
Wahhabis drew criticism a few years back for adding “such as the Jews” and “such as the Christians” into parenthetical glosses on this passage in Qur’ans printed in Saudi Arabia.
Some Western commentators imagined that the Saudis originated this interpretation, and indeed the whole idea of Qur’anic hostility toward Jews and Christians. They found it inconceivable that Muslims all over the world would learn as a matter of course that the central prayer of their faith anathematizes Jews and Christians.
But unfortunately, this interpretation is venerable and mainstream in Islamic theology. The printing of the interpretation in parenthetical glosses into a translation would be unlikely to affect Muslim attitudes, since the Arabic text is always and everywhere normative in any case, and since so many mainstream commentaries contain the idea that the Jews and Christians are being criticized here.
Seventeen times a day, by the pious.
Please note that I am not saying that the anti-Jewish and anti-Christian interpretation of the Fatiha is the “correct” one. While I don’t believe that religious texts are infinitely malleable and can be made to mean whatever the reader wants them to mean, as some apparently do, in this case Nisaburi’s reading has as much to commend it as the other: there is nothing in the text itself that absolutely compels one to believe that it is talking about Jews and Christians. And it is noteworthy that in his massive and evocatively named 30-volume commentary on the Qur’an, Fi Zilal al-Qur’an (In the Shade of the Qur’an), the twentieth-century jihad theorist Sayyid Qutb doesn’t mention Jews or Christians in connection with this passage.
At the same time, however, the idea in Islam that Jews have earned Allah’s anger and Christians have gone astray doesn’t depend on this passage alone. The Jews have earned Allah’s “wrath upon wrath” by rejecting Muhammad (2:87-90), and the Christians have gone astray by holding to the divinity of Christ: “They have certainly disbelieved who say, ‘Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary’”(5:72).
The Hadith, the traditions of the words and deeds of Muhammad and the early Muslims, also contains material linking Jews to Allah’s anger and Christians to his curse, which resulting from their straying from the true path. (The Jews are accursed also, according to Qur’an 2:89, and both are accursed according to 9:30). One hadith recounts that an early Muslim, Zaid bin ‘Amr bin Nufail, in his travels met with Jewish and Christian scholars. The Jewish scholar told him, “You will not embrace our religion unless you receive your share of Allah’s Anger,” and the Christian said, “You will not embrace our religion unless you get a share of Allah’s Curse.” Zaid, needless to say, became a Muslim.
In light of these and similar passages it shouldn’t be surprising that many Muslim commentators have understood the Fatiha to be referring to Jews and Christians.
Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-worldwide-must-read-robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran-sura-1-the-opening/
URLs in this post:
[1] See Introduction here: http://pjmedia.com/blog/a-worldwide-must-read-robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran/
[2] Image: http://pjmedia-new.pjmedia.netdna-cdn.com/user-content/1/files/2015/03/b03d9d40b1fb78805d1552b3d29c9ef31.jpg
[3] giving the impression that he was praying that the assembled pols convert to Islam: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=278
[4] giving rise to the same concerns: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=25990
[5] Tafsir al-Jalalayn: http://www.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=0&tTafsirNo=74&tSoraNo=1&tAyahNo=7&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0
[6] Tanwir al-Miqbas min Tafsir Ibn Abbas: http://www.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=0&tTafsirNo=73&tSoraNo=1&tAyahNo=7&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0
Smell that? It’s Satan passing gas — the Qur’an’s second chapter must be being recited!
When you see the title of the Qur’an’s second chapter, Al-Baqara (“The Cow”), you might be tempted to think that it’s about . . . a cow. You’d be wrong. The chapters of the Qur’an generally take their titles from something recounted within them, even if it’s an insignificant detail. In this case, the chapter name comes from the story of Moses relaying Allah’s command to the Israelites that they sacrifice a cow (2:67-73), one of the Qur’an’s many stories from the Bible and Jewish tradition, altered and retold.
This is the longest chapter (sura) of the Qur’an — 286 verses. It begins the Qur’an’s general (but not absolute) pattern of being organized not chronologically or thematically, but simply running from the longest to the shortest chapters, with the exception of the Fatiha (sura 1), which has pride of place as the first sura because of its centrality in Islam.
This means that you should not take “The Cow” as the original, first, or primary message of Islam, simply because of its position. According to Islamic tradition, it actually dates from the latter part of Muhammad’s career, as it was revealed to Muhammad at Medina — to which he is supposed to have fled from Mecca in the year 622. In Medina for the first time, Muhammad became a political and military leader.
Islamic theologians generally regard Medinan suras as taking precedence over Meccan ones wherever there is a disagreement, in accord with verse 106 of this chapter of the Qur’an, in which Allah speaks about abrogating verses and replacing them with better ones. (This interpretation of verse 106, however, is not universally accepted. Some say it refers to the abrogation of nothing in the Qur’an, but only of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. More on that later.)
“The Cow” contains a great deal of important material for Muslims, and is held in high regard. The medieval Qur’anic commentator Ibn Kathir (whose commentary is still read and respected by Muslims) says that recitation of “The Cow” distresses Satan: he says that one of Muhammad’s early followers, Ibn Mas’ud, remarked that Satan “departs the house where Surat Al-Baqarah is being recited, and as he leaves, he passes gas.” Without Ibn Mas’ud’s poor taste, Muhammad himself says: “Satan runs away from the house in which Surah Baqara is recited.”
The verse immediately following those letters contains a key Islamic doctrine: “This is the Book about which there is no doubt.”
The Qur’an is not to be questioned or judged by any standard outside itself; rather, it is the standard by which all other things are to be judged.
[3]
This refers to the Qur’an’s oft-stated assumption that it is the confirmation of the Torah and the Gospel, which teach the same message Muhammad is receiving in the Qur’anic revelations (see 5:44-48). When the Torah and Gospel were found not to agree with the Qur’an, the charge arose that Jews and Christians had corrupted their Scriptures — which is mainstream Islamic belief today.
The moderate Muslim Qur’an translator and commentator Muhammad Asad, a convert from Judaism, states it positively:
Then 2:30-39 tells the story of Adam and Eve, in a manner suggesting that the hearers of the recitation are already familiar with the story. Allah tells the angels to prostrate themselves before Adam (v. 34), a command that appears to depend upon the Biblical notion of mankind’s having been created in the image of God, although that idea does not appear here or anywhere else in the Qur’an or Islamic theology. According to Ibn Kathir, “Allah stated the virtue of Adam above the angels, because He taught Adam, rather than them, the names of everything.”
Satan refuses to prostrate himself, thereby becoming an unbeliever (v. 34), and tempts Adam and Eve with the forbidden fruit. Allah promises revelations to guide mankind, warning them that those who ignore these revelations will be punished with hellfire.
We’ll be hearing that many, many more times as we go through the Qur’an.
When you see the title of the Qur’an’s second chapter, Al-Baqara (“The Cow”), you might be tempted to think that it’s about . . . a cow. You’d be wrong. The chapters of the Qur’an generally take their titles from something recounted within them, even if it’s an insignificant detail. In this case, the chapter name comes from the story of Moses relaying Allah’s command to the Israelites that they sacrifice a cow (2:67-73), one of the Qur’an’s many stories from the Bible and Jewish tradition, altered and retold.
This is the longest chapter (sura) of the Qur’an — 286 verses. It begins the Qur’an’s general (but not absolute) pattern of being organized not chronologically or thematically, but simply running from the longest to the shortest chapters, with the exception of the Fatiha (sura 1), which has pride of place as the first sura because of its centrality in Islam.
This means that you should not take “The Cow” as the original, first, or primary message of Islam, simply because of its position. According to Islamic tradition, it actually dates from the latter part of Muhammad’s career, as it was revealed to Muhammad at Medina — to which he is supposed to have fled from Mecca in the year 622. In Medina for the first time, Muhammad became a political and military leader.
Islamic theologians generally regard Medinan suras as taking precedence over Meccan ones wherever there is a disagreement, in accord with verse 106 of this chapter of the Qur’an, in which Allah speaks about abrogating verses and replacing them with better ones. (This interpretation of verse 106, however, is not universally accepted. Some say it refers to the abrogation of nothing in the Qur’an, but only of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. More on that later.)
“The Cow” contains a great deal of important material for Muslims, and is held in high regard. The medieval Qur’anic commentator Ibn Kathir (whose commentary is still read and respected by Muslims) says that recitation of “The Cow” distresses Satan: he says that one of Muhammad’s early followers, Ibn Mas’ud, remarked that Satan “departs the house where Surat Al-Baqarah is being recited, and as he leaves, he passes gas.” Without Ibn Mas’ud’s poor taste, Muhammad himself says: “Satan runs away from the house in which Surah Baqara is recited.”
What Is Included in the Second Sura of the Qur’an?
“The Cow” begins with three Arabic letters: alif, lam, and mim. Many chapters of the Qur’an begin with three Arabic letters in this way, which has given rise to a considerable amount of mystical speculation as to what they might mean. But the Tafsir al-Jalalayn [2], another classic Qur’anic commentary, succinctly sums up the prevailing view: “God knows best what He means by these [letters].”The verse immediately following those letters contains a key Islamic doctrine: “This is the Book about which there is no doubt.”
The Qur’an is not to be questioned or judged by any standard outside itself; rather, it is the standard by which all other things are to be judged.
The Qur’an Is Never To Be Doubted
That, of course, is not significantly different from the way many other religions regard their Holy Writ. But there has been no development in Islam of the historical and textual criticism that have transformed the ways Jews and Christians understand their scriptures today. [3]
(No books like this are allowed, for example.)
The Qur’an is a book never to be doubted, never to be questioned: when one Islamic scholar, Suliman Bashear, taught his students at An-Najah National University in Nablus that the Qur’an and Islam were the products of historical development rather than being delivered in perfect form to Muhammad, his students threw him out of the window [4] of his classroom.The Condemnation of Nonbelievers
“The Cow” then gets going with something we find again and again and again in the Qur’an: an extended disquisition on the perversity of those who reject belief in Allah. This one sounds several themes that will recur many, many times. The Qur’an, we’re told, is guidance to those who believe in what was revealed to Muhammad as well as in “what was revealed before” him (v. 4).This refers to the Qur’an’s oft-stated assumption that it is the confirmation of the Torah and the Gospel, which teach the same message Muhammad is receiving in the Qur’anic revelations (see 5:44-48). When the Torah and Gospel were found not to agree with the Qur’an, the charge arose that Jews and Christians had corrupted their Scriptures — which is mainstream Islamic belief today.
The moderate Muslim Qur’an translator and commentator Muhammad Asad, a convert from Judaism, states it positively:
The religion of the Qur’an can be properly understood only against the background of the great monotheistic faiths which preceded it, and which, according to Muslim belief, culminate and achieve their final formulation in the faith of Islam.Another theme in this part of “The Cow” is Allah’s absolute control over everything, even the choices of individual souls to believe in him or reject him:
“Indeed, those who disbelieve — it is all the same for them whether you warn them or do not warn them – they will not believe. Allah has set a seal upon their hearts and upon their hearing, and over their vision is a veil. And for them is a great punishment.” (vv. 6-7).
Free Will Is Anathema
The Qadaris, a Muslim sect early in Islamic history, held that mankind had free will, and was thus capable of choosing to do good or evil. Their opponents maintained that Allah determined everything. While both sides had abundant Qur’anic citations to support their views, eventually Muslim authorities condemned Qadarism as a heresy, as it restricted Allah’s absolute sovereignty over all things. Thus those who reject faith do so because Allah wills them to reject faith, as per these verses, not because they have free choice. Says Ibn Kathir:“These Ayat [verses] indicate that whomever Allah has written to be miserable, they shall never find anyone to guide them to happiness, and whomever Allah directs to misguidance, he shall never find anyone to guide him.” (A good, brief overview of the Qadari controversy can be found in the renowned Islamic scholar Ignaz Goldziher’s Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law [5].)“The Cow” follows this up with a condemnation of hypocrites and false believers, who frequently bedeviled Muhammad during his career as a prophet (vv. 13-20). Then comes the assertion of the sublimity of the Qur’an, such that doubters are challenged to produce a sura like it if they refuse to believe its divine provenance (v. 23). This is a challenge many have taken up [6], but of course it is the kind of challenge that can never be successfully met in the eyes of those who issue it — “they could not produce the like of it” (17:88).
The Virgins in Paradise And the Story of Adam And Eve
2:25 introduces the famous gardens of Paradise, wherein the believers shall reside — you know the ones, with the virgins and all that. More on that later.Then 2:30-39 tells the story of Adam and Eve, in a manner suggesting that the hearers of the recitation are already familiar with the story. Allah tells the angels to prostrate themselves before Adam (v. 34), a command that appears to depend upon the Biblical notion of mankind’s having been created in the image of God, although that idea does not appear here or anywhere else in the Qur’an or Islamic theology. According to Ibn Kathir, “Allah stated the virtue of Adam above the angels, because He taught Adam, rather than them, the names of everything.”
Satan refuses to prostrate himself, thereby becoming an unbeliever (v. 34), and tempts Adam and Eve with the forbidden fruit. Allah promises revelations to guide mankind, warning them that those who ignore these revelations will be punished with hellfire.
We’ll be hearing that many, many more times as we go through the Qur’an.
Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran-sura-2-the-cow-verses-1-39/
URLs in this post:
[1] Read about the first Sura here: http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-worldwide-must-read-robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran-sura-1-the-opening/
[2] Tafsir al-Jalalayn: http://www.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=0&tTafsirNo=74&tSoraNo=2&tAyahNo=1&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0
[3] Image: http://pjmedia-new.pjmedia.netdna-cdn.com/user-content/1/files/2015/03/God-and-Gay-Christian1.jpg
[4] his students threw him out of the window: http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=7025&eng=y
[5] Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Islamic-Theology-Classics-Eastern/dp/0691100993/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7616836-8093515?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1181340867&sr=8-1
[6] many have taken up: http://www.suralikeit.com/
(Read “Sura 2, Verses 40-75″ for the notorious “apes and pigs” passages [1].)
When you read condemnations of Israel from Hamas or Iran or some other Muslim source, remember that they view Israel and Jews through a Qur’anic prism.
They have learned, if they have studied the Qur’an at all, that the Jews are the most perverse and guilty — as well as the craftiest and most persistent — enemies of Allah, Muhammad and the Muslims.
In verse 75, Allah asks the Muslims how they can hope that the Jews will come to believe in Islam, since “a party of them used to hear the words of Allah and then distort the Torah after they had understood it while they were knowing?”
In his Tafsir Anwar al-Bayan, the twentieth-century Indian Mufti Muhammad Aashiq Ilahi Bulandshahri notes that some commentators “have mentioned that the verse refers to the adulteration of the Torah.The Jewish scholars used to accept bribes from people to alter certain injunctions to suit their desires.”
Expanding on this in connection with verse 79, Bulandshahri says that the Jews “commit a dual sin by altering Allah’s scripture and by accepting bribery as well.”
This is a traditional view: the Tafsir al-Jalalayn [2] says that the Jews “altered the description of the Prophet in the Torah, as well as the ‘stoning’ verse, and other details, and rewrote them in a way different from that in which they were revealed.”
The Qur’an adds that in their arrogance, the Jews also think they will only be in hell for a few days (v. 80).
Bukhari recounts [3] that after Muhammad conquered the Jews of Khaibar, an Arabian oasis, they roasted a sheep for the Prophet of Islam — and poisoned it. Sensing their stratagem, he summoned and questioned them. In the course of this, they told him, “We shall remain in the (Hell) Fire for a short period, and after that you [Muslims] will replace us.” Muhammad responded indignantly: “You may be cursed and humiliated in it! By Allah, we shall never replace you in it” and revealed that he knew of their plot to poison him.
Verses 81-105 remind the Jews again of Allah’s favors, favors from which most of them “turned away” (v. 83), and chastise them for their willfulness and disobedience. Allah summarizes their various acts of disobedience (v. 85), culminating in the assertion that the Jews believe only in part of their sacred writings, and “disbelieve in part.”
Ibn Kathir says that they rejected parts of the Torah, and also: “they should not be believed when it comes to the description of the Messenger of Allah, his coming, his expulsion from his land, and his Hijrah, and the rest of the information that the previous Prophets informed them about him, all of which they hid. The Jews, may they suffer the curse of Allah, hid all of these facts among themselves.”
Allah emphasizes that the Jews are accursed for rejecting Islam (vv. 88-89). (This is why most Muslims don’t accept the idea that the Jews have any right to the land of Israel, despite Qur’an 5:21 and other verses: an accursed people doesn’t receive Allah’s gifts.) Verse 98 says that their enemy is Allah himself.
Then Allah issues a challenge (vv. 94-96): if the Jews claim that Paradise is reserved for them alone, why don’t they seek death, instead of being the people “most greedy for life”?
This is the foundation of a jihadist taunt, as an Al-Qaeda warrior in Afghanistan put it a few years ago: “The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death.” The true believers long for Paradise and disdain this world.
Allah then interrupts his torrent of condemnations of the Jews to introduce the Islamic doctrine of abrogation, in which Allah replaces a verse he has previously revealed but abrogated with a verse “better than it or similar to it.”
The Tafsir al-Jalalayn says [4] that this verse was revealed because “the disbelievers began to deride the matter of abrogation, saying that one day Muhammad enjoins his companions to one thing and then the next day he forbids it.” The Tanwir al-Miqbas min Tafsir Ibn Abbas says [4] that it refers to “what was abrogated of the Qur’an and that which was not abrogated.”
Sayyid Qutb maintains that “partial amendment of rulings in response to changing circumstances during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad could only be in the interest of mankind as a whole.” The concept of naskh, abrogation, is the foundation of the widespread Islamic understanding [5] that the violent verses of sura 9 take precedence over the more peaceful verses revealed earlier, since they come later in the lifetime of Muhammad — an idea we will return to later.
(For a full discussion of the Islamic idea of abrogation, see Ahmad Von Denffer’s ‘Ulum al-Qur’an [6].)
Allah then warns the Muslims to keep up their religious duties and not to allow themselves to be led astray by the Jews and Christians, who will try to deceive the Muslims (v. 109) even as they fight among themselves (v. 113). He derides Jewish and Christian attempts to proselytize Muslims (vv. 111, 120, 135), and then states for the first time the oft-repeated rejection of the Christian belief in Jesus as the Son of God. The idea that Allah could have a son is considered to compromise monotheism: “They say, ‘Allah has taken a son.’ Exalted is He! Rather, to Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and the earth. All are devoutly obedient to Him” (v. 116).
Then Allah returns to his favorite targets, to the Jews, reminding them of the covenant Allah made at the Ka’ba in Mecca with Abraham and Ishmael (v. 125). The Jews are reminded that even as Abraham prayed that Mecca would become a “City of Peace,” Allah answered that “such as reject Faith” would soon taste his “torment of Fire” (v. 126).
If you’re surprised to find a Jewish patriarch, Abraham, linked to an Islamic holy site, the Ka’ba, remember that only the perverse “say that Abraham, Isma’il, Isaac, Jacob and the Tribes were Jews or Christians” (v. 140). In fact, they were submitters to Allah — Muslims (v. 128). If they weren’t believers in Muhammad as a prophet, they were at least hanifs: pre-Islamic monotheists.
This underscores the recurring Qur’anic theme that the people we know of today as Jews and Christians are only renegades from the true religion actually taught by Abraham and Moses, as well as Jesus — and that true religion was Islam.
As we have seen, much of sura 2 is devoted to addressing the renegade Jews who have rejected Muhammad and calling them back to the true faith, the faith of Abraham and Moses as well as Muhammad. Thus Islam challenges Judaism and Christianity by claiming that the true and original form of both religions is Islam.
Today, Islamic spokesmen in the West often present the status of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus as Muslim prophets as evidence of Islamic open-mindedness and ecumenical-mindedness. In fact, however, it is only a declaration of the supremacy of Islam and the illegitimacy of Judaism and Christianity.
When you read condemnations of Israel from Hamas or Iran or some other Muslim source, remember that they view Israel and Jews through a Qur’anic prism.
They have learned, if they have studied the Qur’an at all, that the Jews are the most perverse and guilty — as well as the craftiest and most persistent — enemies of Allah, Muhammad and the Muslims.
In verse 75, Allah asks the Muslims how they can hope that the Jews will come to believe in Islam, since “a party of them used to hear the words of Allah and then distort the Torah after they had understood it while they were knowing?”
In his Tafsir Anwar al-Bayan, the twentieth-century Indian Mufti Muhammad Aashiq Ilahi Bulandshahri notes that some commentators “have mentioned that the verse refers to the adulteration of the Torah.The Jewish scholars used to accept bribes from people to alter certain injunctions to suit their desires.”
Expanding on this in connection with verse 79, Bulandshahri says that the Jews “commit a dual sin by altering Allah’s scripture and by accepting bribery as well.”
This is a traditional view: the Tafsir al-Jalalayn [2] says that the Jews “altered the description of the Prophet in the Torah, as well as the ‘stoning’ verse, and other details, and rewrote them in a way different from that in which they were revealed.”
The Qur’an adds that in their arrogance, the Jews also think they will only be in hell for a few days (v. 80).
Bukhari recounts [3] that after Muhammad conquered the Jews of Khaibar, an Arabian oasis, they roasted a sheep for the Prophet of Islam — and poisoned it. Sensing their stratagem, he summoned and questioned them. In the course of this, they told him, “We shall remain in the (Hell) Fire for a short period, and after that you [Muslims] will replace us.” Muhammad responded indignantly: “You may be cursed and humiliated in it! By Allah, we shall never replace you in it” and revealed that he knew of their plot to poison him.
Verses 81-105 remind the Jews again of Allah’s favors, favors from which most of them “turned away” (v. 83), and chastise them for their willfulness and disobedience. Allah summarizes their various acts of disobedience (v. 85), culminating in the assertion that the Jews believe only in part of their sacred writings, and “disbelieve in part.”
Ibn Kathir says that they rejected parts of the Torah, and also: “they should not be believed when it comes to the description of the Messenger of Allah, his coming, his expulsion from his land, and his Hijrah, and the rest of the information that the previous Prophets informed them about him, all of which they hid. The Jews, may they suffer the curse of Allah, hid all of these facts among themselves.”
Allah emphasizes that the Jews are accursed for rejecting Islam (vv. 88-89). (This is why most Muslims don’t accept the idea that the Jews have any right to the land of Israel, despite Qur’an 5:21 and other verses: an accursed people doesn’t receive Allah’s gifts.) Verse 98 says that their enemy is Allah himself.
Then Allah issues a challenge (vv. 94-96): if the Jews claim that Paradise is reserved for them alone, why don’t they seek death, instead of being the people “most greedy for life”?
This is the foundation of a jihadist taunt, as an Al-Qaeda warrior in Afghanistan put it a few years ago: “The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death.” The true believers long for Paradise and disdain this world.
Allah then interrupts his torrent of condemnations of the Jews to introduce the Islamic doctrine of abrogation, in which Allah replaces a verse he has previously revealed but abrogated with a verse “better than it or similar to it.”
The Tafsir al-Jalalayn says [4] that this verse was revealed because “the disbelievers began to deride the matter of abrogation, saying that one day Muhammad enjoins his companions to one thing and then the next day he forbids it.” The Tanwir al-Miqbas min Tafsir Ibn Abbas says [4] that it refers to “what was abrogated of the Qur’an and that which was not abrogated.”
Sayyid Qutb maintains that “partial amendment of rulings in response to changing circumstances during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad could only be in the interest of mankind as a whole.” The concept of naskh, abrogation, is the foundation of the widespread Islamic understanding [5] that the violent verses of sura 9 take precedence over the more peaceful verses revealed earlier, since they come later in the lifetime of Muhammad — an idea we will return to later.
(For a full discussion of the Islamic idea of abrogation, see Ahmad Von Denffer’s ‘Ulum al-Qur’an [6].)
Allah then warns the Muslims to keep up their religious duties and not to allow themselves to be led astray by the Jews and Christians, who will try to deceive the Muslims (v. 109) even as they fight among themselves (v. 113). He derides Jewish and Christian attempts to proselytize Muslims (vv. 111, 120, 135), and then states for the first time the oft-repeated rejection of the Christian belief in Jesus as the Son of God. The idea that Allah could have a son is considered to compromise monotheism: “They say, ‘Allah has taken a son.’ Exalted is He! Rather, to Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and the earth. All are devoutly obedient to Him” (v. 116).
Then Allah returns to his favorite targets, to the Jews, reminding them of the covenant Allah made at the Ka’ba in Mecca with Abraham and Ishmael (v. 125). The Jews are reminded that even as Abraham prayed that Mecca would become a “City of Peace,” Allah answered that “such as reject Faith” would soon taste his “torment of Fire” (v. 126).
If you’re surprised to find a Jewish patriarch, Abraham, linked to an Islamic holy site, the Ka’ba, remember that only the perverse “say that Abraham, Isma’il, Isaac, Jacob and the Tribes were Jews or Christians” (v. 140). In fact, they were submitters to Allah — Muslims (v. 128). If they weren’t believers in Muhammad as a prophet, they were at least hanifs: pre-Islamic monotheists.
This underscores the recurring Qur’anic theme that the people we know of today as Jews and Christians are only renegades from the true religion actually taught by Abraham and Moses, as well as Jesus — and that true religion was Islam.
As we have seen, much of sura 2 is devoted to addressing the renegade Jews who have rejected Muhammad and calling them back to the true faith, the faith of Abraham and Moses as well as Muhammad. Thus Islam challenges Judaism and Christianity by claiming that the true and original form of both religions is Islam.
Today, Islamic spokesmen in the West often present the status of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus as Muslim prophets as evidence of Islamic open-mindedness and ecumenical-mindedness. In fact, however, it is only a declaration of the supremacy of Islam and the illegitimacy of Judaism and Christianity.
Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/must-read-robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran-sura-2-the-cow-verses-75-140/
URLs in this post:
[1] Read “Sura 2, Verses 40-75″ for the notorious “apes and pigs” passages: http://pjmedia.com/blog/robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran-sura-2-the-cow-verses-40-75/
[2] Tafsir al-Jalalayn: http://www.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=0&tTafsirNo=74&tSoraNo=2&tAyahNo=79&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0
[3] Bukhari recounts: http://hadithcollection.com/sahihbukhari/104-Sahih%20Bukhari%20Book%2071.%20Medicine/6494-sahih-bukhari-volume-007-book-071-hadith-number-669.html
[4] The Tafsir al-Jalalayn says: http://www.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=0&tTafsirNo=74&tSoraNo=2&tAyahNo=106&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0
[5] widespread Islamic understanding: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/03/islamic-scholars-conclude-again-that-islamic-state-is-not-islamic-ignore-quranic-teachings-on-which-it-bases-its-case
[6] Ulum al-Qur’an: http://www.amazon.com/Ulum-Al-Quran-Introduction-Sciences-Quran/dp/0860371328/ref=sr_1_6/103-0458373-7706265?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182370435&sr=8-6
How much is your life worth?
In Islamic law, a Muslim woman is worth half of a man, and a Jew or Christian is worth one-third of what a Muslim is worth.
Skeptical? Read on.
Continuing our tour through “The Cow,” the second and longest sura of the Qur’an, we encounter in verses 141-150 a discussion of the qibla, the direction for prayer. Allah tells the Muslims to face the sacred mosque in Mecca when they pray (v. 150), when previously they had joined the Jews in facing Jerusalem. According to Islamic tradition, this came at the end of Muhammad’s attempts to convince the Jews that he was a prophet in the line of the Jewish prophets.
Allah tells Muhammad that only “the foolish among the people” (v. 142) will protest the change. And who are they? You guessed it: the Jews. On that identification the relatively moderate commentator Muhammad Asad and the comparative hardliner Mufti Muhammad Aashiq Ilahi Bulandshahri agree.
Asad says: “This ‘abandonment’ of Jerusalem obviously displeased the Jews of Medina, who must have felt gratified when they saw the Muslims praying towards their holy city; and it is to them that the opening sentence of this passage refers.”
Allah further criticizes the Jews and Christians for following “their desires” even though they knew Muhammad’s qibla is from Allah (vv. 144-6).
We already saw that Allah’s announcement that when he abrogated a verse, he would replace it with a better one (v. 106), and that some Muslims believe that refers to things in the Qur’an, and others think it applies only to the Bible’s having been superseded by the Qur’an. The change in the qibla has some bearing on this.
Ibn Abbas, Muhammad’s cousin and an important early Islamic authority, says that “the first abrogated part in the Qur’an was about the Qiblah.” However, there is nothing in the Qur’an directing Muslims to pray facing Jerusalem, so this is an abrogation of an extra-Qur’anic regulation. Abrogation, as we shall see, is far more important in other contexts.
The qibla change is also the first time that we encounter a running theme in the Qur’an: Allah’s solicitude for Muhammad. An attentive reader of the Qur’an will come away thinking that in the eyes of the Supreme Being, Muhammad is the most important person who ever lived — or the authors of the book wanted to make sure that readers thought so.
Allah presents the new qibla as if it is a gift especially for Muhammad, who “will be pleased” by the new direction for prayer (v. 144). Several other passages in the Qur’an show Allah’s special concern for Muhammad; another is Allah’s gently rebuking him for initially declining to marry his former daughter-in-law (a legendary beauty) when Allah wanted him to do so (33:37).
Such passages have led unbelievers to think that Muhammad was enjoying the personal perks of prophethood, but for Muslims they only underscore Muhammad’s special status: the details of his life, and even his desires — in longing to pray facing the Ka’ba — are vehicles through which Allah reveals eternal truths and divine laws. And his example is normative.
Muqtedar Khan of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy explains [2]:
Meanwhile, the burden of the believers is not heavy. They only need abstain from certain foods, including pork (v. 173). There are among the unbelievers those who stubbornly conceal what they know Allah has revealed (v. 174).
Those who argue about what Allah has revealed in the Qur’an are in “open schism” (v. 176). The Tafsir al-Jalalayn says [3] that these are — yet again — the Jews.
After that, Allah legislates on various matters: zakat (almsgiving), the Ramadan fast, the Hajj, and jihad (vv. 178-203). He establishes the law of retaliation (qisas) for murder (v. 178): equal recompense must be given for the life of the victim, which can take the form of blood money (diyah): a payment to compensate for the loss suffered. In Islamic law (Sharia) the amount of compensation varies depending on the religion of the victim: non-Muslim lives simply aren’t worth as much as Muslim lives.
Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveller), a Sharia manual that Cairo’s prestigious Al-Azhar University certifies as conforming to the “practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community,” says that the payment for killing a woman is half of that to be paid for a man and for killing a Jew or Christian one-third that paid for killing a male Muslim (o4.9).
For an explanation of this, see the Sufi Sheikh Sultanhussein Tabandeh’s statement here [4].
The following are among the Qur’an’s most important words about jihad warfare (vv. 190-193).
“Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress” (v. 190) is often invoked today to show that jihad can only be defensive. Asad says that “this and the following verses lay down unequivocally that only self-defence (in the widest sense of the word) makes war permissible for Muslims.”
However, the Tafsir al-Jalalayn says [5] that this verse was abrogated by 9:1, which voids every treaty between the Muslims and nonbelievers. On the other hand, Ibn Kathir rejects the idea that the verse was abrogated.
What constitutes a defensive conflict? A clue to that comes in v. 193: “Fight them until there is no fitnah and worship is for Allah.” Fitnah is persecution or unrest. Ibn Ishaq explains that this means that Muslims must fight against unbelievers “until God alone is worshipped.”
Says Bulandshahri: “The worst of sins are Infidelity (Kufr) and Polytheism (shirk) which constitute rebellion against Allah, The Creator. To eradicate these, Muslims are required to wage war until there exists none of it in the world, and the only religion is that of Allah.”
That amounts to a declaration of perpetual war against all non-Muslim religions.
Nonetheless, this conflict would be essentially defensive, against the aggressions of unbelief: if Muslims must fight until unbelief does not exist, the mere presence of unbelief constitutes sufficient aggression to allow for the beginning of hostilities.
This is one of the foundations for the supremacist notion that Muslims must wage war against unbelievers until those unbelievers are either converted to Islam or subjugated under the rule of Islamic law, as Qur’an 9:29 states explicitly.
As the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, puts it in a hadith:
In keeping with the theme of war, Allah then warns believers not to doubt, backslide, or follow Islam half-heartedly (vv. 204-210):
In Islamic law, a Muslim woman is worth half of a man, and a Jew or Christian is worth one-third of what a Muslim is worth.
Skeptical? Read on.
Continuing our tour through “The Cow,” the second and longest sura of the Qur’an, we encounter in verses 141-150 a discussion of the qibla, the direction for prayer. Allah tells the Muslims to face the sacred mosque in Mecca when they pray (v. 150), when previously they had joined the Jews in facing Jerusalem. According to Islamic tradition, this came at the end of Muhammad’s attempts to convince the Jews that he was a prophet in the line of the Jewish prophets.
Allah tells Muhammad that only “the foolish among the people” (v. 142) will protest the change. And who are they? You guessed it: the Jews. On that identification the relatively moderate commentator Muhammad Asad and the comparative hardliner Mufti Muhammad Aashiq Ilahi Bulandshahri agree.
Asad says: “This ‘abandonment’ of Jerusalem obviously displeased the Jews of Medina, who must have felt gratified when they saw the Muslims praying towards their holy city; and it is to them that the opening sentence of this passage refers.”
Allah further criticizes the Jews and Christians for following “their desires” even though they knew Muhammad’s qibla is from Allah (vv. 144-6).
We already saw that Allah’s announcement that when he abrogated a verse, he would replace it with a better one (v. 106), and that some Muslims believe that refers to things in the Qur’an, and others think it applies only to the Bible’s having been superseded by the Qur’an. The change in the qibla has some bearing on this.
Ibn Abbas, Muhammad’s cousin and an important early Islamic authority, says that “the first abrogated part in the Qur’an was about the Qiblah.” However, there is nothing in the Qur’an directing Muslims to pray facing Jerusalem, so this is an abrogation of an extra-Qur’anic regulation. Abrogation, as we shall see, is far more important in other contexts.
The qibla change is also the first time that we encounter a running theme in the Qur’an: Allah’s solicitude for Muhammad. An attentive reader of the Qur’an will come away thinking that in the eyes of the Supreme Being, Muhammad is the most important person who ever lived — or the authors of the book wanted to make sure that readers thought so.
Allah presents the new qibla as if it is a gift especially for Muhammad, who “will be pleased” by the new direction for prayer (v. 144). Several other passages in the Qur’an show Allah’s special concern for Muhammad; another is Allah’s gently rebuking him for initially declining to marry his former daughter-in-law (a legendary beauty) when Allah wanted him to do so (33:37).
Such passages have led unbelievers to think that Muhammad was enjoying the personal perks of prophethood, but for Muslims they only underscore Muhammad’s special status: the details of his life, and even his desires — in longing to pray facing the Ka’ba — are vehicles through which Allah reveals eternal truths and divine laws. And his example is normative.
Muqtedar Khan of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy explains [2]:
No religious leader has as much influence on his followers as does Muhammad (Peace be upon him) the last Prophet of Islam. … So much so that the words, deeds and silences (that which he saw and did not forbid) of Muhammad became an independent source of Islamic law. Muslims, as a part of religious observance, not only obey, but also seek to emulate and imitate their Prophet in every aspect of life. Thus Muhammad is the medium as well as a source of the divine law.Allah then encourages the believers to be steadfast (vv. 151-157) and approves of a pre-Islamic practice during the Hajj (v. 158), the pilgrimage to Mecca, before returning to one of favorite themes: the perversity of the unbelievers (vv. 159-177). Those who reject Islam will incur the curses of Allah, the angels, and all mankind (v. 161), and will dwell in hell (v. 162).
Meanwhile, the burden of the believers is not heavy. They only need abstain from certain foods, including pork (v. 173). There are among the unbelievers those who stubbornly conceal what they know Allah has revealed (v. 174).
Those who argue about what Allah has revealed in the Qur’an are in “open schism” (v. 176). The Tafsir al-Jalalayn says [3] that these are — yet again — the Jews.
After that, Allah legislates on various matters: zakat (almsgiving), the Ramadan fast, the Hajj, and jihad (vv. 178-203). He establishes the law of retaliation (qisas) for murder (v. 178): equal recompense must be given for the life of the victim, which can take the form of blood money (diyah): a payment to compensate for the loss suffered. In Islamic law (Sharia) the amount of compensation varies depending on the religion of the victim: non-Muslim lives simply aren’t worth as much as Muslim lives.
Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveller), a Sharia manual that Cairo’s prestigious Al-Azhar University certifies as conforming to the “practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community,” says that the payment for killing a woman is half of that to be paid for a man and for killing a Jew or Christian one-third that paid for killing a male Muslim (o4.9).
For an explanation of this, see the Sufi Sheikh Sultanhussein Tabandeh’s statement here [4].
The following are among the Qur’an’s most important words about jihad warfare (vv. 190-193).
“Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress” (v. 190) is often invoked today to show that jihad can only be defensive. Asad says that “this and the following verses lay down unequivocally that only self-defence (in the widest sense of the word) makes war permissible for Muslims.”
However, the Tafsir al-Jalalayn says [5] that this verse was abrogated by 9:1, which voids every treaty between the Muslims and nonbelievers. On the other hand, Ibn Kathir rejects the idea that the verse was abrogated.
What constitutes a defensive conflict? A clue to that comes in v. 193: “Fight them until there is no fitnah and worship is for Allah.” Fitnah is persecution or unrest. Ibn Ishaq explains that this means that Muslims must fight against unbelievers “until God alone is worshipped.”
Says Bulandshahri: “The worst of sins are Infidelity (Kufr) and Polytheism (shirk) which constitute rebellion against Allah, The Creator. To eradicate these, Muslims are required to wage war until there exists none of it in the world, and the only religion is that of Allah.”
That amounts to a declaration of perpetual war against all non-Muslim religions.
Nonetheless, this conflict would be essentially defensive, against the aggressions of unbelief: if Muslims must fight until unbelief does not exist, the mere presence of unbelief constitutes sufficient aggression to allow for the beginning of hostilities.
This is one of the foundations for the supremacist notion that Muslims must wage war against unbelievers until those unbelievers are either converted to Islam or subjugated under the rule of Islamic law, as Qur’an 9:29 states explicitly.
As the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, puts it in a hadith:
“I have been commanded to fight against people, till they testify to the fact that there is no god but Allah, and believe in me (that) I am the messenger (from the Lord) and in all that I have brought. And when they do it, their blood and riches are guaranteed protection on my behalf except where it is justified by law, and their affairs rest with Allah.” (Sahih Muslim 31)Thus one may reasonably assume that if one does not accept him as a prophet, one’s blood and riches are not safe from those who read these words as the words of a messenger from the one true God.
In keeping with the theme of war, Allah then warns believers not to doubt, backslide, or follow Islam half-heartedly (vv. 204-210):
“O you who have believed, enter into Islam completely and do not follow the footsteps of Satan. Indeed, he is to you a clear enemy” (v. 208).This kind of statement makes reform difficult, for the reformer is always vulnerable to the charge that he is not entering Islam completely.
Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/must-read-robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran-sura-2-the-cow-verses-141-210/
URLs in this post:
[1] Read the prior post here: http://pjmedia.com/blog/must-read-robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran-sura-2-the-cow-verses-75-140/
[2] explains: http://www.ijtihad.org/women2.htm
[3] The Tafsir al-Jalalayn says: http://www.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=0&tTafsirNo=74&tSoraNo=2&tAyahNo=176&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0
[4] here: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/03/pakistan-acquits-cia-contractor-after-us-submits-to-sharia-pays-blood-money
[5] the Tafsir al-Jalalayn says: http://www.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=0&tTafsirNo=74&tSoraNo=2&tAyahNo=190&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0
When is it permissible to break moral laws?
When the Islamic community is being persecuted.
That is the impact of the small, easily overlooked phrase “fitnah is worse than killing,” or “persecution is worse than slaughter,” which appears in Qur’an 2:191 (and 2:217).
Allah devotes a large section of “The Cow” (vv. 189-242) to answering various questions that the Muslims had ostensibly asked Muhammad. Allah begins his answers to Muhammad with “They ask you” (vv. 189, 215, 217, 219, 220, 222).One of these questions was whether or not fighting was permissible during the sacred month, which Allah takes up in v. 217.
Muhammad’s first biographer, an eighth-century Muslim named Ibn Ishaq, gives the background of this verse. After the Hijrah, Muhammad’s move from Mecca to Medina, the Muslims began raiding caravans of the pagan Quryash — Muhammad’s own tribe, which had rejected him.
Muhammad himself led many of these raids.
These raids served a key economic purpose: keeping the Muslim movement solvent. At one point Muhammad sent one of his most trusted lieutenants, Abdullah bin Jahsh, along with eight other Muslims out with orders to watch for a Quraysh caravan at Nakhla, a settlement not far from Mecca, and to “find out what they are doing.”
Abdullah and his band took this as an order to raid the Quraysh caravan, which soon came along, carrying leather and raisins. But it was the last day of the sacred month of Rajab, during which — by longstanding Arab custom — fighting was forbidden. This presented them with a dilemma: if they waited until the sacred month was over, the caravan would get away, but if they attacked, they would sin by killing people during the sacred month.
They finally decided, according to Ibn Ishaq, to “kill as many as they could of them and take what they had.”
On the way home to Medina, Abdullah set aside a fifth of the booty for Muhammad (as per Qur’an 8:41). But when they returned to the Muslim camp, Muhammad refused to share in the loot or to have anything to do with them, saying only: “I did not order you to fight in the sacred month.”
But then Allah revealed v. 217, explaining that the Quraysh’s opposition to Muhammad and supposed persecution of the Muslims was more offensive in his eyes than the Muslims’ violation of the sacred month.
The raid was therefore justified: “for persecution is worse than slaughter.”
Whatever sin the Nakhla raiders had committed in violating the sacred month was nothing compared to the Quraysh’s sins.
Ibn Ishaq explained this verse:
Here again Allah answered in a revelation, saying:
Ibn Kathir, following Ibn Ishaq, also recounts this incident, which was a momentous one: good became identified with anything that was to the benefit of Muslims, and evil with anything that harmed them, without reference to any larger moral standard.
Moral absolutes were swept aside in favor of the overarching principle of expediency.
Sayyid Qutb explains that “Islam is a practical and realistic way of life which is not based on rigid idealistic dogma.” Islam “maintains its own high moral principles,” but only when “justice is established and wrongdoing is contained” — i.e., only when Islamic law rules a society — can “sanctities be protected and preserved.”
So evidently they need not be or cannot be protected before that point.
Like a rejected suitor, Allah then returns to the Jews, again reminding them of all of his spurned favors toward them (v. 211). He notes how the unbelievers scoff at the Muslims (v. 212) and then reveals in capsule form the Islamic view of salvation history:
Don’t like the idea of waging war for Allah? Tough.
Allah exhorts the believers to fight, even though they “dislike it” (v. 216).
Maulana Bulandshahri explains the traditional view:
Besides essentially destroying the idea of moral absolutes, v. 217 is also important for those who leave Islam, or wish they could:
Then Allah forbids Muslims to marry “unbelieving women” (v. 221). Ibn Kathir records a large amount of disagreement among Islamic authorities over whether this prohibition applies to Jewish and Christian women, or just to polytheists. However, he notes that there is Ijma — consensus — among Islamic jurists that such marriages are allowed, although of course Muslim women are not allowed by any school of Islamic law to marry Jewish or Christian men.
In a culture that requires women to be utterly subservient to men, these unequal laws ensure that non-Muslim communities remain subjugated, not enjoying equality of rights or equality of dignity with Muslims.
When the Islamic community is being persecuted.
That is the impact of the small, easily overlooked phrase “fitnah is worse than killing,” or “persecution is worse than slaughter,” which appears in Qur’an 2:191 (and 2:217).
Allah devotes a large section of “The Cow” (vv. 189-242) to answering various questions that the Muslims had ostensibly asked Muhammad. Allah begins his answers to Muhammad with “They ask you” (vv. 189, 215, 217, 219, 220, 222).One of these questions was whether or not fighting was permissible during the sacred month, which Allah takes up in v. 217.
Muhammad’s first biographer, an eighth-century Muslim named Ibn Ishaq, gives the background of this verse. After the Hijrah, Muhammad’s move from Mecca to Medina, the Muslims began raiding caravans of the pagan Quryash — Muhammad’s own tribe, which had rejected him.
Muhammad himself led many of these raids.
These raids served a key economic purpose: keeping the Muslim movement solvent. At one point Muhammad sent one of his most trusted lieutenants, Abdullah bin Jahsh, along with eight other Muslims out with orders to watch for a Quraysh caravan at Nakhla, a settlement not far from Mecca, and to “find out what they are doing.”
Abdullah and his band took this as an order to raid the Quraysh caravan, which soon came along, carrying leather and raisins. But it was the last day of the sacred month of Rajab, during which — by longstanding Arab custom — fighting was forbidden. This presented them with a dilemma: if they waited until the sacred month was over, the caravan would get away, but if they attacked, they would sin by killing people during the sacred month.
They finally decided, according to Ibn Ishaq, to “kill as many as they could of them and take what they had.”
On the way home to Medina, Abdullah set aside a fifth of the booty for Muhammad (as per Qur’an 8:41). But when they returned to the Muslim camp, Muhammad refused to share in the loot or to have anything to do with them, saying only: “I did not order you to fight in the sacred month.”
But then Allah revealed v. 217, explaining that the Quraysh’s opposition to Muhammad and supposed persecution of the Muslims was more offensive in his eyes than the Muslims’ violation of the sacred month.
The raid was therefore justified: “for persecution is worse than slaughter.”
Whatever sin the Nakhla raiders had committed in violating the sacred month was nothing compared to the Quraysh’s sins.
Ibn Ishaq explained this verse:
They have kept you back from the way of God with their unbelief in Him, and from the sacred mosque, and have driven you from it when you were with its people. This is a more serious matter with God than the killing of those whom you have slain.Once he received this revelation, Muhammad took Abdullah’s booty and prisoners. Abdullah was considerably relieved, and asked: “Can we hope that it will count as a raid for which we shall be given the reward of combatants?”
Here again Allah answered in a revelation, saying:
Indeed, those who have believed and those who have emigrated and fought in the cause of Allah — those expect the mercy of Allah (v. 218).“Fought” here is jahadu (جَاهَدُو), which is a form of jihad, and “jihad for the sake of Allah” or “jihad in the way of Allah” (جَاهَدُواْ فِي سَبِيلِ اللّهِ) in Islamic theology always refers to jihad warfare, not to more spiritualized understandings of jihad.
Ibn Kathir, following Ibn Ishaq, also recounts this incident, which was a momentous one: good became identified with anything that was to the benefit of Muslims, and evil with anything that harmed them, without reference to any larger moral standard.
Moral absolutes were swept aside in favor of the overarching principle of expediency.
Sayyid Qutb explains that “Islam is a practical and realistic way of life which is not based on rigid idealistic dogma.” Islam “maintains its own high moral principles,” but only when “justice is established and wrongdoing is contained” — i.e., only when Islamic law rules a society — can “sanctities be protected and preserved.”
So evidently they need not be or cannot be protected before that point.
Like a rejected suitor, Allah then returns to the Jews, again reminding them of all of his spurned favors toward them (v. 211). He notes how the unbelievers scoff at the Muslims (v. 212) and then reveals in capsule form the Islamic view of salvation history:
Mankind was one religion; then Allah sent the prophets as bringers of good tidings and warners and sent down with them the Scripture in truth to judge between the people concerning that in which they differed. And none differed over the Scripture except those who were given it — after the clear proofs came to them — out of jealous animosity among themselves (v. 213).The people who were given the Scripture are the Jews and the Christians.
And Allah guided those who believed to the truth concerning that over which they had differed, by His permission. And Allah guides whom He wills to a straight path (v. 213).That is, Allah guided the Muslims to the truth about the things the People of the Book disagreed about. Ibn Kathir explains that they disagreed about the “day of Congregation”:
The Jews made it Saturday while the Christians chose Sunday. Allah guided the Ummah [community] of Muhammad to Friday.They also disagreed about the direction to face when praying (qiblah), postures of prayer, fasting, and the true religion of Abraham: “The Jews said, `He was a Jew,’ while the Christians considered him Christian. Allah has made him a Haniyfan Musliman” — that is, a pre-Islamic monotheist.
Don’t like the idea of waging war for Allah? Tough.
Allah exhorts the believers to fight, even though they “dislike it” (v. 216).
Maulana Bulandshahri explains the traditional view:
While the Muslims were in Makkah, they were weak and few in number, never possessing the capability nor the divine permission for Jihad (religious war). After migrating to Madinah, they received the order to fight their enemies in defense, as a verse of Surah Hajj [chapter 22 of the Qur’an] proclaims: “Permission (to fight) has been granted to those being attacked because they are oppressed” [22:39]. Later on the order came to fight the Infidels (kuffar) even though they do not initiate the aggression.Bulandshahri was a modern-day theologian, but this view of the three stages of development of the Qur’an’s teaching on warfare is found in Ibn Ishaq’s eighth century work, and in the writings of mainstream Islamic theologians throughout the ages, including Ibn Kathir, Ibn Qayyim, Ibn Juzayy, As-Suyuti, and many others.
Besides essentially destroying the idea of moral absolutes, v. 217 is also important for those who leave Islam, or wish they could:
And whoever of you reverts from his religion and dies while he is a disbeliever – for those, their deeds have become worthless in this world and the Hereafter, and those are the companions of the Fire, they will abide therein eternally (Qur’an 2:217).The Tafsir al-Qurtubi, a classic and mainstream exegesis of the Qur’an, explains:
Scholars disagree about whether or not apostates are asked to repent. One group says that they are asked to repent and, if they do not, they are killed. Some say they are given an hour and others a month. Others say that they are asked to repent three times, and that is the view of Malik. Al-Hasan said they are asked a hundred times. It is also said that they are killed without being asked to repent.After that, Allah also forbids alcoholic drinks and gambling (v. 219). Several early authorities — Ibn `Umar, Ash-Sha`bi, Mujahid, Qatadah, Ar-Rabi` bin Anas and `Abdur-Rahman bin Aslam — say it was the first of three verses to be revealed on this subject, and that would mean that the other two would take precedence over it. Here Allah says that there is “some benefit” in alcohol, but in 5:90 he says that it is “Satan’s handiwork,” which would rule out the ol’ demon rum as being beneficial at all.
Then Allah forbids Muslims to marry “unbelieving women” (v. 221). Ibn Kathir records a large amount of disagreement among Islamic authorities over whether this prohibition applies to Jewish and Christian women, or just to polytheists. However, he notes that there is Ijma — consensus — among Islamic jurists that such marriages are allowed, although of course Muslim women are not allowed by any school of Islamic law to marry Jewish or Christian men.
In a culture that requires women to be utterly subservient to men, these unequal laws ensure that non-Muslim communities remain subjugated, not enjoying equality of rights or equality of dignity with Muslims.
Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/must-read-robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran-sura-2-the-cow-verses-211-221/
Are you a non-Muslim? Then Allah hates you (Qur’an 3:32).
Are you Jewish or Christian? In the Qur’an’s third chapter, Allah will tell you why you’re following a false religion.
The Qur’an’s third chapter is entitled “The Family of Imran” — that is, Amram, the father of Moses and Aaron (Exodus 6:20), who is mentioned in verses 33 and 35. Like most titles in the Qur’an, this title doesn’t denote the sura’s theme, but is just a word taken from within the chapter that is simply a means to distinguish it from other chapters.
According to Maududi, Sura 3, which is a Medinan sura, is “especially addressed” to Jews and Christians, as well as to Muslims.
It contains, he says, a “continuation of the invitation in Al-Baqarah [Sura 2], in which they have been admonished for their erroneous beliefs and evil morals and advised to accept, as a remedy, the Truth of the Quran.” Likewise Bulandshahri says that Sura 3 is a “talking proof” against the Jews, Christians, and idolaters, since it addresses them all. ”It invites them towards the truth and refutes their false beliefs, which includes the blasphemous ideologies concerning Sayyidina [Masters] Isa and Ibrahim [Jesus and Abraham].”
That concern is evident from the beginning of the chapter. Allah proclaims that the Qur’an now revealed to Muhammad confirms what was written in the Torah and the Gospel (v. 3). Ibn Kathir explains that “these Books testify to the truth of the Qur’an, and the Qur’an also testifies to the truth these Books contained, including the news and glad tidings of Muhammad’s prophethood and the revelation of the Glorious Qur’an.”
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Asad therefore emphasizes:
The same verse also promises a “severe punishment” to those who “disbelieve in the verses of Allah.” The 20th century Indian Muslim scholar Allama Shabbir Ahmed Usmani sees this as proof that Jesus cannot be divine, for while “God is powerful to venge [sic] and punish whenever He deems fit,” Jesus “cannot be a sovereign like God because he could not overcome the miscreants who were chasing him to kill.”
After saying that he has revealed this great Criterion of what is right and wrong, Allah cautions believers against getting carried away, explaining that some verses in the Qur’an are clear and some aren’t, “such as,” says the Tafsir al-Jalalayn, “the opening verses of some sūras,” including the opening verse of this sura.
These are not to be explored too deeply by the Muslims (although they have been): Allah warns that it is only “those in whose hearts is deviation” who “follow that of it which is unspecific, seeking discord and seeking an interpretation. And no one knows its interpretation except Allah” (v. 7).
Why would Allah include material in his “clear” revelation of guidance to human beings that only he knows the meaning of? He doesn’t say.
Allah then exhorts the believers not to reject faith in him (vv. 8-27), and warns the unbelievers that grievous punishment awaits them in hell.
He refers to the Battle of Badr (v. 13), the first great victory for the Muslims, when a small force prevailed against a much larger army of pagan Arabs from Muhammad’s Quraysh tribe (they had rejected his prophetic claim). Maududi says that the first thirty-two verses of Sura 3 were “probably revealed soon after the Battle of Badr,” and this verse says that it was a “sign” when the two armies met; “one was fighting in the cause of Allah, the other resisting Allah.”
These armies “saw as twice their number,” which Ibn Kathir explains: “When the two camps saw each other, the Muslims thought that the idolaters were twice as many as they were, so that they would trust in Allah and seek His help. The idolaters thought that the believers were twice as many as they were, so that they would feel fear, horror, fright and despair.”
Allah, Maududi says, “gives victory to His believing servants in this life” — that is, the Muslims’ victory was due to their obedience to Allah. The reverse is also true: when Muslims suffer, all too often they ascribe their suffering to being insufficiently Islamic, and the remedy is always more Islam. There is no idea in Islam of the Biblical principle that the wicked may prosper because of the fallen nature of the world — in Islam, if the wicked prosper, it is because the Muslims aren’t Islamic enough.
Allah declares that “the religion in the sight of Allah is Islam” (إِنَّ الدِّينَ عِندَ اللّهِ الإِسْلاَم) (v. 19), and that the People of the Book reject it only “out of jealous animosity between themselves.” The Jews and Christians, says Bulandshahri, recognized Muhammad “to be the final Prophet but their obstinate nature prevented them from accepting.” Allah says that they will be saved if they submit to Allah (v. 20); Bulandshahri continues: “One cannot force these people to accept, but can merely advise them. Inviting them to accept Islam is the duty of the Muslim.”
After that, Allah warns of his judgment, and above all warns believers not to take unbelievers as “friends or helpers” (َأَوْلِيَا — a word that means more than casual friendship, but something more like an alliance), “except when taking precaution against them in prudence” (v. 28). This is a foundation of the idea that believers may legitimately deceive unbelievers when under pressure.
The word used for “guard” in the Arabic is tuqātan (تُقَاةً), the verbal noun from taqiyyatan — hence the increasingly familiar term taqiyya. Ibn Kathir says that the phrase “except when taking precaution against them in prudence” means that “believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers” may “show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly. For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda’ said, ‘We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.’ Al-Bukhari said that Al-Hasan said, ‘The Tuqyah [taqiyya] is allowed until the Day of Resurrection.’”
While many Muslim spokesmen today maintain that taqiyya is solely a Shi’ite doctrine, shunned by Sunnis, the great Islamic scholar Ignaz Goldziher points out that while it was formulated by Shi’ites, “it is accepted as legitimate by other Muslims as well, on the authority of Qur’an 3:28.” Sunnis in many jihadi and Islamic supremacist groups practice it today.
According to Muhammad’s first biographer, Ibn Ishaq, the first eighty verses of Sura 3 were revealed after a delegation of Christians came from the Yemeni city of Najran. One of the leaders of this delegation was a bishop, Abu Haritha ibn Alqama, who received money, servants, and other favors from “the Christian kings of Byzantium.” Abu Haritha, says Ibn Ishaq, knew that Muhammad was a prophet, but refused to accept him for fear of losing the loot that the Byzantines were lavishing upon him.
Ibn Ishaq records that the delegation “differed among themselves in some points, saying [Jesus] is God; and He is the son of God; and He is the third person of the Trinity, which is the doctrine of Christianity.” They presented arguments defending these propositions to Muhammad, but he would have none of it. When they told him that they had submitted to God, he responded: “You lie. Your assertion that God has a son, your worship of the cross, and your eating pork hold you back from submission.” Allah then revealed much of sura 3, refuting their assertions and giving the world the truth about Jesus and Christianity.
He begins by telling the story of Mary’s birth and early life, telling us in that her mother was the “wife of Imran” (v. 35) — that is, Amram, the father of Moses and Aaron. This verse, along with 19:28, in which Mary is called “sister of Aaron,” has given rise to the charge that Muhammad confused Miriam the sister of Moses with Mary the Mother of Jesus, since the names are identical in Arabic: Maryam (مَرْيَمُ).
When confronted about this, Muhammad had a ready answer: “The (people of the old age) used to give names (to their persons) after the names of Apostles and pious persons who had gone before them” (Sahih Muslim 25.5326).
However, while this may explain why Mary is called “sister of Aaron,” it doesn’t explain why she is clearly depicted here as the daughter of Imran. Clearly the authors of the Qur’an really did think that Jesus was Moses’ nephew, the son of his sister.
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This story recalls one told in the Protoevangelium of James, a second-century Christian document: in it, Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anne, prayed to God for an end to their childlessness, and dedicated the child they subsequently conceived to the Lord in thanksgiving. When Mary was three, she went to live in the Temple, where she was fed by an angel. This is the sort of thing that earned Muhammad the charge that he was just retailing “legends of the former peoples” (6:25, 8:31, 16:24, 23:83, 25:5, 27:68, 46:17, 68:15, 83:13), not divine revelation.
But Muslims respond that the Qur’an is sorting out the true from the false about Christianity among the revelations that were corrupted by the followers of Jesus.
Allah then recounts the birth of John the Baptist (vv. 38-41), hitting the highlights of Luke 1:5-80: angels tell Zechariah he will have a son, he asks how this can be since he is old, and he is rendered unable to speak. Then Allah begins to tell the story of the birth of Jesus, beginning with a reaffirmation of Muhammad’s prophethood (v. 44): Ibn Kathir explains that even though Muhammad wasn’t present at these events, “Allah disclosed these facts” to him as if he had been an eyewitness.
The angels’ announcement of Jesus’ birth (vv. 45-6) differs from Gabriel’s annunciation in Luke 1:30-35 in several key particulars: in the Qur’an, Jesus is identified as a “word” from Allah and is called “Messiah,” but not “Son of the Most High.” Muslim exegetes explain that Jesus is Allah’s word not in the sense of being divine, as in John 1:1, but because he was created without a human father by Allah’s word, as was Adam — as v. 59 explains. Allah says that he will teach Jesus “writing and wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel” (v. 48): in the Qur’an, the Gospel is not the news about Jesus, but a book that he is given by Allah. Allah recounts several miracles Jesus performed, each one “by permission of Allah” (v. 49). Bulandshahri explains that this clause is repeated in order to emphasize that only by Allah’s permission does Jesus perform miracles — since “after witnessing these miracles, especially the raising of the dead, it is possible that a person may consider Sayyidina Isa [Master Jesus] to be Allah himself.” One of these miracles involves bringing clay birds to life, which appears in the second-century Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
When the Jews reject Jesus, he gathers disciples who say, “We have believed in Allah and testify that we are Muslims” (اشْهَدْ بِأَنَّا مُسْلِمُونَ) (v. 52). And while Jesus’ enemies plotted against him, Allah, “the best of schemers” (v. 54), plotted also, revealing that he would “raise [Jesus] to Myself.” This, says Ibn Ishaq, refuted “what they assert of the Jews in regard to his crucifixion” — to which we will return in sura 4, which says that “they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them” (v. 157).
“This,” says Allah, is “the true narration. And there is no deity except Allah” (v. 62) — in other words, Jesus is not divine. Allah tells Muhammad in v. 61 to challenge those who believe otherwise: since “knowledge has come to you,” he should say to dissenters: “Come, let us call our sons and your sons, our women and your women, ourselves and yourselves, then supplicate earnestly and invoke the curse of Allah upon the liars.”
According to Ibn Ishaq, when the Christian delegation from Najran heard this, they asked Muhammad for time to confer among themselves. Then one of their leaders told the rest: “O Christians, you know right well that Muhammad is a prophet sent (by God) and he has brought a decisive declaration about the nature of your master. You know too that a people has never invoked a curse on a prophet and seen its elders live and its youth grow up. If you do this you will be exterminated. But if you decide to adhere to your religion and to maintain your doctrine about your master, then take your leave of the man and go home.”
So they went to Muhammad, declined his challenge, and went home, obstinate renegades confirmed in their rebellion against Allah.
In verses 64-120 of the Qur’an’s Sura 3, “The Family of Imran,” Allah continues to charge that Jews and Christians reject Islam only out of perversity, and call them back to the true faith of Abraham. Allah caps the Qur’an’s presentation of Christianity in verses 33-63 by calling the People of the Book to accept Islam. This is presented as an invitation to an “agreement”: “that we will not worship except Allah and not associate anything with Him and not take one another as lords instead of Allah” (v. 64). That Qur’an verse also calls Jews and Christians to come to a “common word” with Muslims, that they will worship only him. “Common Word” became the name of a popular Muslim-Christian dialogue initiative [9] that continues to this day.
This initiative began with a letter of the same name from Muslim scholars to Christian leaders; the Muslims never explained that the rest of the passage from which the phrase “Common Word” was taken called Jews and Christians to stop associating partners with Allah in worship and worship Allah alone — that is, become Muslims. But this Qur’an verse calls on Christians to reject Christ’s divinity, as well calling on Jews and Christians to stop deifying their “rabbis and monks,” which the Tafsir al-Jalalayn mentions in connection with this verse. That charge comes from Qur’an 9:31.
Allah rebukes the Jews and Christians for arguing over something about which they “have no knowledge” (v. 66): the religion of Abraham. The Patriarch couldn’t have been a Jew or a Christian, says v. 65, because “the Torah and the Gospel were not revealed until after him.” In reality, he was a Muslim hanif (حَنِيفًا مُّسْلِمً) (v. 67) — as the Tafsir al-Jalalayn explains: “Abraham in truth was not a Jew, neither a Christian, but he was a Muslim, professing the Oneness of God, and a hanīf, who inclined away from all other religions towards the upright one; and he was never of the idolaters.”
What’s more, Muhammad and the Muslims are “the nearest of kin to Abraham,” as Ibn Kathir says: “This Ayah [verse] means, ‘The people who have the most right to be followers of Ibrahim are those who followed his religion and this Prophet, Muhammad, and his Companions.’”
Of course, if Abraham was a Muslim, Judaism is completely illegitimate. The Jews (and Christians) are simply renegades from the true faith of their own prophets — which was Islam. And that is the view of Judaism and Christianity that many Muslims have today. Allah emphasizes the perversity of some of the Jews and Christians: they wish to lead the Muslims astray, when it is actually they who go astray, rejecting the “signs of Allah” even though they are witnesses of them (vv. 69-70). “Signs” is in Arabic “ayat,” which is also the word used for the verses of the Qur’an.
This therefore could refer to the delegation of Christians from Najran and/or other Christians and Jews who heard Muhammad recite the Qur’an and still rejected Islam — and, according to Islamic accounts, knew Muhammad was a prophet but didn’t want to admit it for selfish reasons. Says Maududi: “This is why the Qur’an repeatedly blames them for maliciously misrepresenting the signs of God which they saw with their own eyes and to which they themselves attested.” And they even stooped, as recounted in verses 71-2, to subterfuges to try to turn others away from Islam: they speak untruth about Allah while they know” (v. 75).
Among these dirty tricks, they pass off their own words as Holy Scripture (v. 78); some skeptics have speculated that Muhammad himself, seeking information about earlier revelations, was among their victims, before he caught on to the ruse.
Allah dismisses as “impossible” the idea that a prophet — clearly Jesus — could have taught that he was divine (vv. 79-80). He is just a prophet like the other prophets (v. 84), and Allah will accept from no one any religion other than Islam (v. 85). And those who reject the true Faith after accepting it bear “he curse of Allah and the angels and the people, all together” (verses 86-7). This refers, says Maududi, to the “Jewish rabbis of Arabia” who acknowledged and then denied Muhammad. Allah asserts that Jewish dietary laws were invented by the Jews (or Jacob — Israel — himself, vv. 93-4), and in v. 95 calls the Jews to reject what Maududi calls “hair-splitting legalism” and return to the true monotheism of Abraham — i.e., Islam.
Allah says that the shrine at Mecca (Bakkah) was the world’s first house of worship (v. 96). It was built, says Ibn Kathir, by Abraham, “whose religion the Jews and Christians claim they follow. However, they do not perform Hajj [Pilgrimage] to the house that Ibrahim built by Allah’s command, and to which he invited the people to perform Hajj.” The People of the Book “disbelieve in the verses of Allah” (v. 98) and try to obstruct others on the path of Allah (v. 99). If Muslims listen to these Jews and Christians who reject Islam, they will become apostates (v. 100). On the Day of Judgment, the faces of the blessed will be white, and those of the damned will be black (v. 106).
On earth, meanwhile, the Muslims are “the best nation produced,” while most Jews and Christians are “defiantly disobedient” (v. 110). However, the Muslims need not fear, for the Jews and Christians are also cowards: “And if they fight you, they will show you their backs” (v. 111). They are covered with shame — “except for a covenant from Allah and a rope from the Muslims” (v. 112). This, says Bulandshahri, refers to the non-Muslims’ agreeing “to pay the atonement (Jizya) to the Muslim state, in which case they will be accorded the rights of a Dhimmi.” These rights are not equal to the rights of Muslims: the dhimmis must accept subservience and second-class status (cf. 9:29) in exchange for a guarantee of protection — as long as they do not offend the Muslims.
Now, all of this is not to paint the People of the Book with a broad brush! Some “among the People of the Scripture is a community standing, reciting the verses of Allah during periods of the night and prostrating” (v. 113). According to Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Abbas and others, this refers to “the clergy of the People of the Scriptures who embraced the faith” of Islam. But steer clear of those who don’t accept Islam: v. 118, says Ibn Kathir, forbids Muslims from “taking followers of other religions as consultants and advisors,” for even those who are outwardly kind actually hate the Muslims (v. 119-120).
Are you Jewish or Christian? In the Qur’an’s third chapter, Allah will tell you why you’re following a false religion.
The Qur’an’s third chapter is entitled “The Family of Imran” — that is, Amram, the father of Moses and Aaron (Exodus 6:20), who is mentioned in verses 33 and 35. Like most titles in the Qur’an, this title doesn’t denote the sura’s theme, but is just a word taken from within the chapter that is simply a means to distinguish it from other chapters.
According to Maududi, Sura 3, which is a Medinan sura, is “especially addressed” to Jews and Christians, as well as to Muslims.
It contains, he says, a “continuation of the invitation in Al-Baqarah [Sura 2], in which they have been admonished for their erroneous beliefs and evil morals and advised to accept, as a remedy, the Truth of the Quran.” Likewise Bulandshahri says that Sura 3 is a “talking proof” against the Jews, Christians, and idolaters, since it addresses them all. ”It invites them towards the truth and refutes their false beliefs, which includes the blasphemous ideologies concerning Sayyidina [Masters] Isa and Ibrahim [Jesus and Abraham].”
That concern is evident from the beginning of the chapter. Allah proclaims that the Qur’an now revealed to Muhammad confirms what was written in the Torah and the Gospel (v. 3). Ibn Kathir explains that “these Books testify to the truth of the Qur’an, and the Qur’an also testifies to the truth these Books contained, including the news and glad tidings of Muhammad’s prophethood and the revelation of the Glorious Qur’an.”
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Allah teaches that the Torah was originally Islamic, but was rewritten by the Jews.
This again explains why mainstream Islamic tradition regards the Jewish and Christian Scriptures as corrupted: they don’t, after all, confirm what is in the Qur’an, and so Jews and Christians must have dared to alter them — and now, Allah says, “they were deluded in their religion by what they were inventing” (v. 24).Asad therefore emphasizes:
It is to be borne in mind that the Gospel frequently mentioned in the Qur’an is not identical with what is known today as the Four Gospels, but refers to an original, since lost, revelation bestowed upon Jesus and known to his contemporaries under its Greek name of Evangelion (‘Good Tiding’), on which the Arabicized form Injil is based. It was probably the source from which the Synoptic Gospels derived much of their material and some of the teachings attributed to Jesus. The fact of its having been lost and forgotten is alluded to in the Qur’an in 5:14.In contrast to the Jews’ and Christians’ corrupted scriptures, Allah has now revealed the “Criterion” (Arabic فُرْقَانَ — furqan, v. 4), which is, as Ibn Kathir puts it, “the distinction between misguidance, falsehood and deviation on one hand, and guidance, truth and piety on the other hand.” According to Qatada and many other Islamic authorities, this “criterion” is the Qur’an itself, although others say it refers to all the revealed scriptures — in their uncorrupted form, of course.
The same verse also promises a “severe punishment” to those who “disbelieve in the verses of Allah.” The 20th century Indian Muslim scholar Allama Shabbir Ahmed Usmani sees this as proof that Jesus cannot be divine, for while “God is powerful to venge [sic] and punish whenever He deems fit,” Jesus “cannot be a sovereign like God because he could not overcome the miscreants who were chasing him to kill.”
After saying that he has revealed this great Criterion of what is right and wrong, Allah cautions believers against getting carried away, explaining that some verses in the Qur’an are clear and some aren’t, “such as,” says the Tafsir al-Jalalayn, “the opening verses of some sūras,” including the opening verse of this sura.
These are not to be explored too deeply by the Muslims (although they have been): Allah warns that it is only “those in whose hearts is deviation” who “follow that of it which is unspecific, seeking discord and seeking an interpretation. And no one knows its interpretation except Allah” (v. 7).
Why would Allah include material in his “clear” revelation of guidance to human beings that only he knows the meaning of? He doesn’t say.
Allah then exhorts the believers not to reject faith in him (vv. 8-27), and warns the unbelievers that grievous punishment awaits them in hell.
He refers to the Battle of Badr (v. 13), the first great victory for the Muslims, when a small force prevailed against a much larger army of pagan Arabs from Muhammad’s Quraysh tribe (they had rejected his prophetic claim). Maududi says that the first thirty-two verses of Sura 3 were “probably revealed soon after the Battle of Badr,” and this verse says that it was a “sign” when the two armies met; “one was fighting in the cause of Allah, the other resisting Allah.”
These armies “saw as twice their number,” which Ibn Kathir explains: “When the two camps saw each other, the Muslims thought that the idolaters were twice as many as they were, so that they would trust in Allah and seek His help. The idolaters thought that the believers were twice as many as they were, so that they would feel fear, horror, fright and despair.”
Allah, Maududi says, “gives victory to His believing servants in this life” — that is, the Muslims’ victory was due to their obedience to Allah. The reverse is also true: when Muslims suffer, all too often they ascribe their suffering to being insufficiently Islamic, and the remedy is always more Islam. There is no idea in Islam of the Biblical principle that the wicked may prosper because of the fallen nature of the world — in Islam, if the wicked prosper, it is because the Muslims aren’t Islamic enough.
Allah declares that “the religion in the sight of Allah is Islam” (إِنَّ الدِّينَ عِندَ اللّهِ الإِسْلاَم) (v. 19), and that the People of the Book reject it only “out of jealous animosity between themselves.” The Jews and Christians, says Bulandshahri, recognized Muhammad “to be the final Prophet but their obstinate nature prevented them from accepting.” Allah says that they will be saved if they submit to Allah (v. 20); Bulandshahri continues: “One cannot force these people to accept, but can merely advise them. Inviting them to accept Islam is the duty of the Muslim.”
After that, Allah warns of his judgment, and above all warns believers not to take unbelievers as “friends or helpers” (َأَوْلِيَا — a word that means more than casual friendship, but something more like an alliance), “except when taking precaution against them in prudence” (v. 28). This is a foundation of the idea that believers may legitimately deceive unbelievers when under pressure.
The word used for “guard” in the Arabic is tuqātan (تُقَاةً), the verbal noun from taqiyyatan — hence the increasingly familiar term taqiyya. Ibn Kathir says that the phrase “except when taking precaution against them in prudence” means that “believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers” may “show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly. For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda’ said, ‘We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.’ Al-Bukhari said that Al-Hasan said, ‘The Tuqyah [taqiyya] is allowed until the Day of Resurrection.’”
While many Muslim spokesmen today maintain that taqiyya is solely a Shi’ite doctrine, shunned by Sunnis, the great Islamic scholar Ignaz Goldziher points out that while it was formulated by Shi’ites, “it is accepted as legitimate by other Muslims as well, on the authority of Qur’an 3:28.” Sunnis in many jihadi and Islamic supremacist groups practice it today.
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Jesus was Moses’ nephew? Hey, it’s in the Qur’an.According to Muhammad’s first biographer, Ibn Ishaq, the first eighty verses of Sura 3 were revealed after a delegation of Christians came from the Yemeni city of Najran. One of the leaders of this delegation was a bishop, Abu Haritha ibn Alqama, who received money, servants, and other favors from “the Christian kings of Byzantium.” Abu Haritha, says Ibn Ishaq, knew that Muhammad was a prophet, but refused to accept him for fear of losing the loot that the Byzantines were lavishing upon him.
Ibn Ishaq records that the delegation “differed among themselves in some points, saying [Jesus] is God; and He is the son of God; and He is the third person of the Trinity, which is the doctrine of Christianity.” They presented arguments defending these propositions to Muhammad, but he would have none of it. When they told him that they had submitted to God, he responded: “You lie. Your assertion that God has a son, your worship of the cross, and your eating pork hold you back from submission.” Allah then revealed much of sura 3, refuting their assertions and giving the world the truth about Jesus and Christianity.
He begins by telling the story of Mary’s birth and early life, telling us in that her mother was the “wife of Imran” (v. 35) — that is, Amram, the father of Moses and Aaron. This verse, along with 19:28, in which Mary is called “sister of Aaron,” has given rise to the charge that Muhammad confused Miriam the sister of Moses with Mary the Mother of Jesus, since the names are identical in Arabic: Maryam (مَرْيَمُ).
When confronted about this, Muhammad had a ready answer: “The (people of the old age) used to give names (to their persons) after the names of Apostles and pious persons who had gone before them” (Sahih Muslim 25.5326).
However, while this may explain why Mary is called “sister of Aaron,” it doesn’t explain why she is clearly depicted here as the daughter of Imran. Clearly the authors of the Qur’an really did think that Jesus was Moses’ nephew, the son of his sister.
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Hmm. Maybe the same eyes?
In any case, Imran’s wife dedicates the child in her womb to the service of Allah (v. 35); when she gives birth, she says of Mary, “I seek refuge for her in You and her descendants from Satan, the expelled” (v. 36). Every child, said Muhammad, is “pricked by the Satan” after he is born — that’s why babies cry when they’re born. However, Mary and Jesus were preserved from this touch of Satan. Although the child is a female and “the male is not like the female” (v. 36), the wife of Imran fulfills her vow: Mary is dedicated to Allah’s service. Bulandshahri says that she went to live in the Temple in Jerusalem, which he calls the Baitul Muqaddas (“Holy House”). In keeping with the Islamic idea that the original message of all the Jewish prophets was Islam, Islamic tradition identifies it as a mosque. There Mary is fed miraculously (v. 37).This story recalls one told in the Protoevangelium of James, a second-century Christian document: in it, Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anne, prayed to God for an end to their childlessness, and dedicated the child they subsequently conceived to the Lord in thanksgiving. When Mary was three, she went to live in the Temple, where she was fed by an angel. This is the sort of thing that earned Muhammad the charge that he was just retailing “legends of the former peoples” (6:25, 8:31, 16:24, 23:83, 25:5, 27:68, 46:17, 68:15, 83:13), not divine revelation.
But Muslims respond that the Qur’an is sorting out the true from the false about Christianity among the revelations that were corrupted by the followers of Jesus.
Allah then recounts the birth of John the Baptist (vv. 38-41), hitting the highlights of Luke 1:5-80: angels tell Zechariah he will have a son, he asks how this can be since he is old, and he is rendered unable to speak. Then Allah begins to tell the story of the birth of Jesus, beginning with a reaffirmation of Muhammad’s prophethood (v. 44): Ibn Kathir explains that even though Muhammad wasn’t present at these events, “Allah disclosed these facts” to him as if he had been an eyewitness.
The angels’ announcement of Jesus’ birth (vv. 45-6) differs from Gabriel’s annunciation in Luke 1:30-35 in several key particulars: in the Qur’an, Jesus is identified as a “word” from Allah and is called “Messiah,” but not “Son of the Most High.” Muslim exegetes explain that Jesus is Allah’s word not in the sense of being divine, as in John 1:1, but because he was created without a human father by Allah’s word, as was Adam — as v. 59 explains. Allah says that he will teach Jesus “writing and wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel” (v. 48): in the Qur’an, the Gospel is not the news about Jesus, but a book that he is given by Allah. Allah recounts several miracles Jesus performed, each one “by permission of Allah” (v. 49). Bulandshahri explains that this clause is repeated in order to emphasize that only by Allah’s permission does Jesus perform miracles — since “after witnessing these miracles, especially the raising of the dead, it is possible that a person may consider Sayyidina Isa [Master Jesus] to be Allah himself.” One of these miracles involves bringing clay birds to life, which appears in the second-century Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
When the Jews reject Jesus, he gathers disciples who say, “We have believed in Allah and testify that we are Muslims” (اشْهَدْ بِأَنَّا مُسْلِمُونَ) (v. 52). And while Jesus’ enemies plotted against him, Allah, “the best of schemers” (v. 54), plotted also, revealing that he would “raise [Jesus] to Myself.” This, says Ibn Ishaq, refuted “what they assert of the Jews in regard to his crucifixion” — to which we will return in sura 4, which says that “they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them” (v. 157).
“This,” says Allah, is “the true narration. And there is no deity except Allah” (v. 62) — in other words, Jesus is not divine. Allah tells Muhammad in v. 61 to challenge those who believe otherwise: since “knowledge has come to you,” he should say to dissenters: “Come, let us call our sons and your sons, our women and your women, ourselves and yourselves, then supplicate earnestly and invoke the curse of Allah upon the liars.”
According to Ibn Ishaq, when the Christian delegation from Najran heard this, they asked Muhammad for time to confer among themselves. Then one of their leaders told the rest: “O Christians, you know right well that Muhammad is a prophet sent (by God) and he has brought a decisive declaration about the nature of your master. You know too that a people has never invoked a curse on a prophet and seen its elders live and its youth grow up. If you do this you will be exterminated. But if you decide to adhere to your religion and to maintain your doctrine about your master, then take your leave of the man and go home.”
So they went to Muhammad, declined his challenge, and went home, obstinate renegades confirmed in their rebellion against Allah.
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Are you a Jew or a Christian? You know better: you know Islam is true, but willfully reject it. It’s in the Qur’an.In verses 64-120 of the Qur’an’s Sura 3, “The Family of Imran,” Allah continues to charge that Jews and Christians reject Islam only out of perversity, and call them back to the true faith of Abraham. Allah caps the Qur’an’s presentation of Christianity in verses 33-63 by calling the People of the Book to accept Islam. This is presented as an invitation to an “agreement”: “that we will not worship except Allah and not associate anything with Him and not take one another as lords instead of Allah” (v. 64). That Qur’an verse also calls Jews and Christians to come to a “common word” with Muslims, that they will worship only him. “Common Word” became the name of a popular Muslim-Christian dialogue initiative [9] that continues to this day.
This initiative began with a letter of the same name from Muslim scholars to Christian leaders; the Muslims never explained that the rest of the passage from which the phrase “Common Word” was taken called Jews and Christians to stop associating partners with Allah in worship and worship Allah alone — that is, become Muslims. But this Qur’an verse calls on Christians to reject Christ’s divinity, as well calling on Jews and Christians to stop deifying their “rabbis and monks,” which the Tafsir al-Jalalayn mentions in connection with this verse. That charge comes from Qur’an 9:31.
Allah rebukes the Jews and Christians for arguing over something about which they “have no knowledge” (v. 66): the religion of Abraham. The Patriarch couldn’t have been a Jew or a Christian, says v. 65, because “the Torah and the Gospel were not revealed until after him.” In reality, he was a Muslim hanif (حَنِيفًا مُّسْلِمً) (v. 67) — as the Tafsir al-Jalalayn explains: “Abraham in truth was not a Jew, neither a Christian, but he was a Muslim, professing the Oneness of God, and a hanīf, who inclined away from all other religions towards the upright one; and he was never of the idolaters.”
What’s more, Muhammad and the Muslims are “the nearest of kin to Abraham,” as Ibn Kathir says: “This Ayah [verse] means, ‘The people who have the most right to be followers of Ibrahim are those who followed his religion and this Prophet, Muhammad, and his Companions.’”
Of course, if Abraham was a Muslim, Judaism is completely illegitimate. The Jews (and Christians) are simply renegades from the true faith of their own prophets — which was Islam. And that is the view of Judaism and Christianity that many Muslims have today. Allah emphasizes the perversity of some of the Jews and Christians: they wish to lead the Muslims astray, when it is actually they who go astray, rejecting the “signs of Allah” even though they are witnesses of them (vv. 69-70). “Signs” is in Arabic “ayat,” which is also the word used for the verses of the Qur’an.
This therefore could refer to the delegation of Christians from Najran and/or other Christians and Jews who heard Muhammad recite the Qur’an and still rejected Islam — and, according to Islamic accounts, knew Muhammad was a prophet but didn’t want to admit it for selfish reasons. Says Maududi: “This is why the Qur’an repeatedly blames them for maliciously misrepresenting the signs of God which they saw with their own eyes and to which they themselves attested.” And they even stooped, as recounted in verses 71-2, to subterfuges to try to turn others away from Islam: they speak untruth about Allah while they know” (v. 75).
Among these dirty tricks, they pass off their own words as Holy Scripture (v. 78); some skeptics have speculated that Muhammad himself, seeking information about earlier revelations, was among their victims, before he caught on to the ruse.
Allah dismisses as “impossible” the idea that a prophet — clearly Jesus — could have taught that he was divine (vv. 79-80). He is just a prophet like the other prophets (v. 84), and Allah will accept from no one any religion other than Islam (v. 85). And those who reject the true Faith after accepting it bear “he curse of Allah and the angels and the people, all together” (verses 86-7). This refers, says Maududi, to the “Jewish rabbis of Arabia” who acknowledged and then denied Muhammad. Allah asserts that Jewish dietary laws were invented by the Jews (or Jacob — Israel — himself, vv. 93-4), and in v. 95 calls the Jews to reject what Maududi calls “hair-splitting legalism” and return to the true monotheism of Abraham — i.e., Islam.
Allah says that the shrine at Mecca (Bakkah) was the world’s first house of worship (v. 96). It was built, says Ibn Kathir, by Abraham, “whose religion the Jews and Christians claim they follow. However, they do not perform Hajj [Pilgrimage] to the house that Ibrahim built by Allah’s command, and to which he invited the people to perform Hajj.” The People of the Book “disbelieve in the verses of Allah” (v. 98) and try to obstruct others on the path of Allah (v. 99). If Muslims listen to these Jews and Christians who reject Islam, they will become apostates (v. 100). On the Day of Judgment, the faces of the blessed will be white, and those of the damned will be black (v. 106).
On earth, meanwhile, the Muslims are “the best nation produced,” while most Jews and Christians are “defiantly disobedient” (v. 110). However, the Muslims need not fear, for the Jews and Christians are also cowards: “And if they fight you, they will show you their backs” (v. 111). They are covered with shame — “except for a covenant from Allah and a rope from the Muslims” (v. 112). This, says Bulandshahri, refers to the non-Muslims’ agreeing “to pay the atonement (Jizya) to the Muslim state, in which case they will be accorded the rights of a Dhimmi.” These rights are not equal to the rights of Muslims: the dhimmis must accept subservience and second-class status (cf. 9:29) in exchange for a guarantee of protection — as long as they do not offend the Muslims.
Now, all of this is not to paint the People of the Book with a broad brush! Some “among the People of the Scripture is a community standing, reciting the verses of Allah during periods of the night and prostrating” (v. 113). According to Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Abbas and others, this refers to “the clergy of the People of the Scriptures who embraced the faith” of Islam. But steer clear of those who don’t accept Islam: v. 118, says Ibn Kathir, forbids Muslims from “taking followers of other religions as consultants and advisors,” for even those who are outwardly kind actually hate the Muslims (v. 119-120).
Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/must-read-robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran-sura-3-the-family-of-imran/
URLs in this post:
[1] one: http://pjmedia.com/blog/a-worldwide-must-read-robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran/
[2] two: http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-worldwide-must-read-robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran-sura-1-the-opening/
[3] three: http://pjmedia.com/blog/robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran-sura-2-the-cow-verses-1-39/
[4] four: http://pjmedia.com/blog/must-read-robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran-sura-2-the-cow-verses-75-140/
[5] five: http://pjmedia.com/blog/must-read-robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran-sura-2-the-cow-verses-141-210/
[6] six: http://pjmedia.com/blog/must-read-robert-spencers-blogging-the-quran-sura-2-the-cow-verses-211-221/
[7] Image: http://pjmedia-new.pjmedia.netdna-cdn.com/user-content/1/files/2015/04/Unknown-1.jpeg
[8] Image: http://pjmedia-new.pjmedia.netdna-cdn.com/user-content/1/files/2015/04/jesus-moses-action-figures.jpg
[9] popular Muslim-Christian dialogue initiative: http://www.acommonword.com/
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