Read the Qur'an Through 100 Verses
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Read the Qur’an Through 100 Verses Read the Qur’an Through 100 Verses © Paul Ellis All rights reserved Second edition, 2019 To my dear wife The Prophet said, “Whoever recites one hundred verses in one night it will be as if he spent the night in worship.” [Musnad, Ahmad Hanbal] Introduction For better or for worse, the Qur’an is one of the most important books in the history of mankind. A quarter of humanity asserts that it contains the words of God Himself. Societies across a vast tract of the earth, stretching almost uninterrupted from the Atlantic coast of North Africa to the South Pacific, cite it as their spiritual, moral, political and legal compass. Given current demographic trends and population movements, it seems inevitable that large urban areas in Western Europe will soon also turn Muslim majority. Yet astonishingly, despite the Qur’an’s undoubted importance, barely any non-Muslims, and surprisingly few Muslims, have ever taken the time to actually read it. In fairness, several factors make the Qur’an a difficult read. The text was composed in Arabic as rhyming verses to be memorised and recited, and it loses this quality when translated and presented as printed prose. Stories within the Qur’an are usually only referred to briefly, or at best partially told, on the assumption that they would be well known by their audience: an assumption that does not apply to a modern readership. Many key Arabic words have no precise English equivalent, and some passages only make sense within a certain context, understood by Muslims in terms of the life of Mohammed as it is recorded elsewhere. All of this means that for a translated Qur'an to convey its meaning to the reader, the translator must either rewrite the text according to their own understanding of its purpose or else break it up with numerous explanatory footnotes and insertions. For most readers of the Qur’an, though, the single most formidable obstacle they face, and the one that this book is intended to help them overcome, is the lack of a clear chronological or thematic structure. It is not that the Qur’an lacks any structure at all. With familiarity, patterns can be discerned. After a short, introductory ‘surah’ (or chapter), surahs tend to be arranged according to the length of the surah, with the longest first, and verse lengths tend to decrease with the length of the surah. Surahs 2, 3, 4 and 5 tend to set out the Qur’an’s message in contrast to Judaism and Christianity, whilst surahs 6, 7, 8 and 9 are presented as opposing those who commit the sin of ‘shirk’ – the association of things with God (traditionally presented as polytheism and idolatry). Many of the shorter surahs have a symmetrical ‘mirror’ pattern with the second half revisiting the same themes encountered by the reader/listener in the first half but in reverse order, framing a pivotal middle section. Sometimes surahs seem to form clusters addressing related topics, and several surahs can be paired so that a theme that is central to one becomes the commencement and conclusion of its companion. However, for those people seeking for themselves the answer to the question ‘What does the Qur’an say?’, either in general or in relation to a specific topic, the Qur’an’s fragmentary structure is unhelpful. The purpose of this book is to offer navigational assistance to the new Qur’an reader who embarks upon that increasingly vital enquiry. Paul Ellis Paul Ellis is a retired barrister, and a teacher. Qur’an references appear in { } brackets and quotations are, unless otherwise stated, taken from The Study Quran (2015). References to related sections of this book appear in 〈 〉 brackets. Contents Prologue: III People of the Book the bismillah 17. People of the Book I God and His Creation B. Biblical figures in the Qur’an 1. God 2. God’s Spirit 18. Noah 19. Abraham A. The cosmology of 20. Isaac and Ishmael the Qur'an 21. Moses 22. Solomon 3. Creation 23. Jesus 4. Angels 24. Discrepancies between 5. Jinn the Bible and the Qur’an 6. Adam 25. Apocryphal sources 7. Iblis and al-Shaitan IV Non-biblical stories II Islam 26. The Arab prophets 8. The Qur’an 27. The elephant 9. Gabriel 28. The sleepers in the cave 10. The reliability of the 29. ‘Al-Khidr’ recitation 30. Dhu’l Qarnayn 11. Abrogation 12. ‘Muhammad’ 13. ‘Islam’ 14. Obedience to Mohammed 15. Mohammed as ‘a beautiful example’ 16. Articles of faith V. The Life of Mohammed D. Mohammed’s wives C. Traditional chronology 54. Mohammed’s wives of the life of Mohammed 55. Rules for Mohammed’s Wives 31. Mecca and Yathrib 56. Rules for visiting 32. The first revelation Mohammed’s house 33. The Salat 34. Abu Lahab VI Sharia 35. ‘To you your religion, and to me mine’ E. The Five Pillars of Islam 36. The Night Journey 37. Splitting the moon 57. Zakat 38. The first permission to 58. Usury fight 59. Eligibility for marriage 39. ‘Fitna is worse than slaying’ 60. Polygamy 40. The raid at Naklah 61. Beating one’s wife 41. The Battle of Badr for disobedience 42. Treatment of the 62. Divorce captives of Badr 63. Weaning 43. Changing the Qibla 64. Adoption 44. The Battle of Uhud 65. Inheritance 45. ‘There is no compulsion in 66. Slavery religion’ 67. Intercourse with ‘those one’s 46. The Battle of the Trench right hand possesses’ 47. Massacre and enslavement of the F. Punitive sanctions in Banu Qurayza the Qur’an 48. The Treaty of Hudaybiyya and 68. Fornication and promise of the spoils Adultery of Kaybar 69. Making an 49. The Conquest of Mecca unsupported 50. The Battle of Hunayn allegation of sexual 51. The Battle of Tabouk Impropriety 52. ‘The Sword Verse’ 70. Homosexuality 53. Jizya 71. Theft 72. Consuming alcohol IX The End of Days and gambling 73-74. 'Working corruption 96. The Last Day on the earth’ 97. Judgment 75. Qisas 98. The Heights 76. Killing believers 99. Gardens of Paradise and covenantors 100. The Hellfire 77. Dietary rules 78. Fasting Index of Qur’an Verses 79. Women are ‘a tilth’ 80. Modest female attire 81. The testimony of women VII Virtuous behaviour 82. Honesty 83. Generosity 84. Respect for others 85. ‘Repel evil with good’ VIII Unbelievers 86. Believers and unbelievers 87. Unbelievers are ‘the worst of creatures’ 88. ‘Al-wala wal bara’ (loyalty and rejection) 89. Kindness to unbelievers not forbidden 90. Taqiyyah 91. Meaning of jihad 92. Reasons for jihad 93. Martyrdom 94. Rules of war 95. Terms of surrender Prologue: the bismillah The numbered verses of each surah of the Qur’an, with the exception of Surahs 1 and 9, are preceded with the words of the bismillah, ‘Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim’: In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. In Surah 1 the words of the bismillah are also the first words, but here they appear, not as a prelude to the body of the surah, but as its first verse, the first verse of the Qur’an, {1.1}, 〈33.〉. Reference to the name of God is of particular significance in Jewish scripture where God’s names (Yahweh, Eloah, etc) are often left unstated out of reverence. The practice of praying to God in the name of God, whilst paradoxical, derives from instructions in the New Testament, especially John 14.12-14, where Jesus says ‘I go to the Father and whatever you ask in my name I will do’. In consequence of this it has become common for Christians to preface their prayers by invoking all three members of the Holy Trinity: ’In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’. The Qur’an’s repeated invocation of God’s name through the bismillah would appear to serve a similar role.1 A comparison has also been drawn with a Zoroastrian text, Dasatir I Asmai, which begins each chapter: ‘In the name of God, the Giver, the Forgiver, the Merciful, the Just’.2 ‘Rahman’ and ‘rahim’ both derive from a common Arabic root ‘r-h-m’ and are commonly translated as ‘compassionate’ (alternatively ’gracious’ or ‘beneficent’) and ‘merciful’ respectively. The word ‘rahim’ was used by both Jews and Christians as an epithet of God in pre-Islamic Arabia and derives from the Hebrew word ‘ha-rahum’, meaning ‘womb’. It is unclear if the bismillah, as an introduction to the surahs, was an original part of the Quranic text or a later addition. The fact that, as a matter of strict logic, it makes little sense for God to invoke His own name would support the view that it was added to each surah as part of a late editing process. This thesis is further strengthened by a tradition that Surah 1, of which it is effectively an abbreviation, was itself a later addition to the original Qur’an.3 Two theories, that are, it is suggested, equally plausible, have been proposed to explain why the bismillah is absent from Surah 9. One is that since Surah 9 is generally considered to have been the last full surah to have been composed, the absence of the words may be a sign that the surah did not undergo some final editorial process prior to the Qur’an being canonised. Perhaps this was related to the sudden death of Mohammed. The other possibility that has been suggested is that since Surah 9 includes references to episodes in Mohammed’s later military campaigns (see 〈50.〉 〈51.〉 below), whilst his earlier campaigns are addressed in Surah 8 (see 〈39.〉), it may have been the case that Surahs 8 and 9 once formed a single continuous body of text, which would have been the longest surah in the Qur’an, and which may have been, at some stage, divided into two parts for convenience of recitation.