| Pain, Pleasure and Prejudice The Complete Layman’s Guide to the Koran Chapter 6 Getting To Know Allah 4:132 To Allah belongs what is in the heavens and on earth, and Allah suffices as Guardian! 4:133 If Allah wants, O people, He would annihilate you and replace you by others. Allah has the power to do that. 4:134 Whoever desires the reward of this world, with Allah is the reward of this world and the next. Allah is All-Hearing, All-Seeing. The flattering invocation “In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful” begins every chapter of the Koran except chapter 1, The Opening (also referred to as the Chapter of Prayer because it is repeated in every one of the five daily prayers) and chapter 9, Repentance. This phrase may not appear at the beginning of the first chapter because the reader is reminded at least twice in this short chapter (seven verses) of Allah’s merciful and compassionate nature. THE OPENING 1 Al-Fâtihah 1:1 In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, 1:2 Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds, 1:3 The Compassionate, the Merciful, 1:4 Master of the Day of Judgement, 1:5 Only You do we worship, and only You do we implore for help. 1:6 Lead us to the right path, 1:7 The path of those You have favoured Not those who have incurred Your wrath or have gone astray. The reason put forward by some Islamic scholars why the phrase, In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful does not appear at all in chapter 9, Repentance, is because Repentance is mainly about making war. In war, Allah expects no mercy and compassion to be shown to those who will not submit to His will. In any event, a compassionate and merciful god is not the impression that a first time lay reader of the Koran is left with. Quite the opposite! This is not to say that Allah is not a compassionate and merciful god, He is. But it is a conditional type of mercy and compassion about which we will have more to say later. A Conditional Type of Mercy In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful is also the phrase that you hear Muslims repeating over and over during their daily prayers and almost every time the name Allah is mentioned in print or during a conversation. This phrase in particular leaves a lay reader of the Koran somewhat perplexed since these are not qualities, as mentioned previously, we associate with Allah as our reading takes us further and further into the Koran and the mind of the Koranic God. You’re only thirteen verses into the Koran (6,333 verses to go) and it starts, verse 2:7. 2:6 Those who have disbelieved, whether you warn them or not, they will not believe. 2:7 Allah has sealed their hearts and their hearing; their sight is dimmed and a terrible punishment awaits them. 2:8 There are some who say: “We believe in Allah and the Last Day;” but they are not real believers. 2:9 They seek to deceive Allah and the believers, but they deceive none other than themselves, though they are not aware of that. 2:10 In their hearts is a sickness; so Allah has increased their sickness. A painful punishment awaits them because of their lying. More than six thousand verses later and Allah is still at it, talking about punishment and pain and burning people – men, women and children – in a raging fire. If compassionate is defined as being aware of the suffering of an other and wishing to relieve it, and merciful as being unconditionally kind and forgiving then these are not the virtues we would associate with the author of the following verses about roasting a man, over an open fire, with his wife, tethered like an animal, supplying the firewood that fuels the flame that is burning her husband. THE FIBRE 111 Al-Masad In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful 111:1 Perish the hands of Abu Lahab, and may he perish too; 111:2 Neither his wealth nor what he has earned will avail him anything. 111:3 He will roast in a flaming fire, 111:4 And his wife will be a carrier of fire-wood, 111:5 She shall have a rope of fibre around her neck. Does it matter that Abu Lahab and his wife were inveterate enemies of Islam in the early days? If the treatment reserved for Abu Lahab, an uncle of the Prophet, and his wife was an exception to the definition of mercy and compassion then perhaps the phrase most associated with Allah would not, for the non-believer, have such a hollow ring. Roasting in Hell for an eternity is the fate Allah reserves for all who refuse to believe in Him and His Messenger; a fiery fate for all unbelievers which Allah never tires of reminding the readers of the Koran. Disowning Your Family to Follow Allah Islamic tradition informs us that Allah showed what non-Muslims would consider compassion and mercy for an unbeliever only once. He spared the Prophet Muhammad’s parents the torment of Hell after His Messenger was seen weeping over the tomb of his mother at Medina. When asked by people who were near him at the time why he was crying, he replied, it was because he had just seen his parents burning in hell. Allah would bring both parents, Abdullah and Amina, back to life temporarily so that they could become Muslim and enter Paradise. His Messenger’s parents notwithstanding, the God of the Koran is adamant that all unbelievers, whether they be your children, your mother, your father are to be shown no compassion or mercy. Another Islamic tradition maintains that when God saw His Messenger praying for a beloved, recently deceased uncle who had sheltered him, protected him from his enemies, been a father to the young Muhammad, whose own father died before he was born, he was scolded by the angel Gabriel. The angel, in no uncertain terms, informed the Prophet that Allah did not want to see His Messenger praying for an unbeliever ever again (his uncle Abu-Talib died an unbeliever). He reminded the Prophet that it was all pointless anyway, since unbelievers automatically go to hell. The further you get into the Koran the more you have difficulty accepting the contradiction of a god who claims to be compassionate and merciful while revelling in the pain he will cause you if you die an unbeliever. Then you remember; Islam is all about loyalty and the whole thing starts making sense … again. Those who intone In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful during prayer and at other occasions are reminding their god that the price of their loyalty is the compassion and mercy he has promised to those who remain loyal and die believing in the Koranic Deity.
|
