The fourth sūra from the Makkan period is Sūrat al-Muddaththir, which starts: O thou enveloped in thy cloak, Arise and warn! Thy Lord magnify, Thy raiment purify, And uncleanness shun, And show not favour, seeking wordly gain! And for the sake of your Lord, be patient! These verses from should have been the first verses in the Qur’ān because they talk about monotheism, the abandonment of idols and the importance of purity and they instruct Muḥammad to propagate his Message. That is, they form a brief definition of Islam, and so it were better that they stood at the beginning of the Qur’ān.
ALTHOUGH THE VERSES symbolize Muḥammad as ‘the one enveloped in a cloak, which Muḥammad duly was on the first day that Jibrīl came to him, when Muḥammad was afraid of him and said to Khadīja, “Cloak me! cloak me!” the Lord of the Qur’ān ‘revealed it’ after three sūras had already preceded it. The Lord of the Qur’ān then resorts again to threats and intimidation, and says:
For when the trumpet shall sound, Surely that day will be a day of anguish, Not of ease, for disbelievers. Leave Me (to deal) with him whom I created alone, And then bestowed upon him ample means, And sons abiding in his presence, And made (life) smooth for him. Yet he desireth that I should give more. Nay! For lo! he hath been stubborn to Our revelations. On him I shall impose a fearful doom.[1]
The word ‘trumpet’ (nāqūr) was imposed by the rhymes ending in ‘r’ whereas the commonly used word for this was the nāqūs bell that the Christians used to sound in their churches. If the bell is rung that will be a day of anguish. The meaning of the sentence here is clear enough. But then it adds: Not of ease, for disbelievers. This repetition is meaningless, because if it will not of ease, it will be not of ease both for the unbelievers and for the believers equally.
It is mere linguistic chicanery for them to make the word mean what they want it to mean
Once again, He is asking us, or Muḥammad, to Leave Me (to deal) with that person whom He spoke about and threatened at the beginning of the sūra, and says, Leave Me (to deal) with him whom I created alone, And then bestowed upon him ample means. Isn’t every human being created alone? Was Muḥammad created in a group of twins, for example? This wealthy person of sons abiding in his presence, whose life has been made smooth for himGod will impose a fearful doom upon, just as the gods of the Greeks imposed upon Sisyphus, forcing him to push the rock up to the top of the mountain, only for it to roll back down to the bottom again, and for him to have to haul it back up again exhausted. What the gods of Greece did collectively can be done on His own by the Muḥammad’s god.
Then he brings us verses that rein back every intellect:
For lo! he did consider; then he appraised – But may he be killed for how he appraised;[2] Again, may he be cursed how he appraised; Then he looked, Then he frowned and scowled, Then he turned back and was puffed up with pride, And said: This is naught else than magic from of old; This is naught but the word of a mortal.[3]
This person, who dared to consider and evaluate, was killed because he evaluated. Then he was killed again for having pondered. Then, after he had been killed twice (and we do not know how he could have been killed twice), he looked, then frowned and scowled. Then he turned back and was puffed up with pride. How can this person who has been killed twice go on to look and frown. And the word ‘scowled’ (basara) was imposed by the saj‘ rhyme of soothsayers, since it means nothing to the Arabic speaker. They tried to get around this. Al-Qurṭubī, for instance, said: “Basar means ‘his face scowled and changed hue’” and came up with a verse from a poet he claimed was from the pre-Islamic period:
We quaffed a draught the day after al-Jafr, with a Shahbā’ wine that was stricken, scowling and of changing hue.
This verse of poetry is very poor and unlikely to have been penned by a pre-Islamic poet. Nor do we know how the Shahbā’ wine could ‘scowl’ and change its hue, while the poet Abū Nuwās said of it that it was
of a golden hue that no afflictions could darken.
But it is mere linguistic chicanery for them to make the word mean what they want it to mean.
Why did the author of the Qur’ān use strange words?
And this person, it is the sadism enveloping this same author of the Qur’ān that makes him insist on delineating the nature of the humiliating torments, the Qur’ān responded thus:
Soon will I cast him into Hell-Fire! And what will explain to thee what Hell-Fire is? It leaves naught nor does it spare aught. It scorches black the mortal. Over it are nineteen. And We have set none but angels as Guardians of the Fire; and We have fixed their number only as a trial for Unbelievers,- in order that the People of the Book may arrive at certainty, and the Believers may increase in Faith,- and that no doubts may be left for the People of the Book and the Believers, and that those in whose hearts is a disease and the Unbelievers may say, “What symbol doth Allah intend by this?” Thus doth Allah leave to stray whom He pleaseth, and guide whom He pleaseth: and none can know the forces of thy Lord, except He and this is none other than a warning to mankind.[4]
After five short verses in the sūra, the author of the Qur’ān comes in with a verse that is almost equal in length to half of the entire Sūrat al-Muddaththir. Nor is recited in saj‘ like the rest of the the sūra’s verses. It is clearly not part of this sūra but was inserted here by mistake. The God of the Qur’ān never tires of repeating threats and portents of torment. But this time, the person who said that the Qur’ān was the word of a mortal will be cast into Hellfire. And because the Arabs at the time did not know the word used here for Hellfire – saqr – he said to them And what will explain to thee what Saqr is. The writer of the Qur’ān actually used this question whenever there was a strange word that the Arabs did not understand. For example, he said,
Ah, what will convey unto thee what the ḥāqqa is! – And what will make you comprehend what the qāri‘a is? – Ah, what will tell thee what the ṭāriq is! – And what will explain to thee ‘aqaba? – And what will explain to thee what sijjīn is? – And what will explain to thee what ‘illiyūn is?[5]
All these words are not Arabic, and so that people do not ask Muḥammad what they mean, he said to them, And what will explain?, meaning no one knows anything about them, so do not ask.
Ibn Kathir, and others, are simply taking advantage of the Muslims’ ignorance of the other books to claim that these books said what they did not actually say
If we look at the description of Saqr we find that the dictates of the saj‘ rhyme have been prioritised over the meaning, as he says: lawwāḥatun lil-bashar – ‘alayhā tis‘ata ‘ashar (It scorches the mortal. Over it are nineteen). The phrase lawwāḥatun lil-bashar doesn’t mean anything to the reader. Does Saqr brighten with heat, does it shine at them, or does it change their colour? No one knows what is meant here. And why should nineteen angels be over them torturing billions of people on the Day of Resurrection, while this god sends only five thousand angels collected together to fight a thousand polytheists from the Quraysh at the battle of Badr? This verse confirms that the author of the Qur’ān has a problem with arithmetic.
What is the meaning of this verse
And We have fixed their number only as a trial for Unbelievers,- in order that the People of the Book may arrive at certainty, and the Believers may increase in Faith.
Did the God of the Qur’ān mean: And We have fixed their number (i.e nineteen) only as a trial for Unbelievers? Ibn Kathir agrees with this interpretation saying:
That is, He mentioned that their number (‘idda) was nineteen in order that those to whom the Book was being brought should know that this is a true Messenger, because what he pronounced was agreeing with the heavenly books they had in their hands, books which had been revealed to the prophets before him.
As for the word ‘idda used here – although it may mean ‘number’ – the Arabs used it for the ‘idda period that women had to wait before re-marrying if they were divorced or their husband had died. They also used the word to mean ‘goods’ or ‘materiel. So we say: ‘prepare your materiel of arrows and spears for war’. Why did the author of the Qur’ān use strange words instead of just saying ‘we did not stipulate their number’?
We find the symbol of the crescent atop the minarets of mosques and fluttering on the flags of Islamic countries, since it represents to them their ancient god
Moreover, the other heavenly books make no mention of the Guardians of Hell being nineteen in number. Ibn Kathir, and others, are simply taking advantage of the Muslims’ ignorance of the other books to claim that these books said what they did not actually say. We do not understand why he decided to make the nineteen Guardians of Hell a test for the infidels. If he had made the number five thousand, as he did in Badr, would the test lose its meaning? But since repetition is a characteristic feature of the Qur’ān it goes on to tell us:
In order that the People of the Book may arrive at certainty, and the Believers may increase in Faith,- and that no doubts may be left for the People of the Book.
If the People of the Book are certain, it means that they are not in any doubt, so there is no point in mentioning the quasi-sentence that no doubts may be left for the People of the Book.
The Sūrat al-Muddaththir then goes into a section that the god of the Qur’ān repeats much of in the subsequent sūras. It runs:
Nay; I swear by the moon, And the night when it departs, And the daybreak when it shines; This is but one of the mighty (portents), A warning to mankind,- To him among you who wishes to go forward or remain behind.[6]
These verses underline the idolatry of Islam, which is an extension of the period of ‘ignorance’ from which Muḥammad took all its beliefs and customs and made part of the Qur’ān – such as the ḥajj, the circumambulation of the Ka‘ba, the offering of sacrifice, polygamy, divorce through pronouncing the ṭalāq formula three times, the taḥlīl marriage,[7] and the ‘idda waiting period for the widow and the divorcee. Before they abandoned Yemen for the Hijaz region the pre-Islamic Arabs worshiped the moon, and believed that he married the sun and gave birth to the stars, such as the Al-Shi‘rā that they worshiped and mentioned in the Qur’ān (He is the Lord of Sirius[8]),
It is the sadism enveloping this same author of the Qur’ān that makes him insist on delineating the nature of the humiliating torments
The worship of the moon was at the heart of the beliefs of the pre-Islamic era that were alien to Islam, and therefore the Lord of the Qur’ān swears by it a lot. It is for this reason that we find the Makkan Qur’ān containing a complete sūra entitled The Moon and others called The Sun, The Star, The Forenoon, The Night and The Daybreak. For the same reason we find the symbol of the crescent atop the minarets of mosques and fluttering on the flags of Islamic countries, since it represents to them their ancient god (And the night when it departs, And the daybreak when it shines). What exactly is the use for this section of night and daybreak, and what is its purpose?
The sūra continues:
Every soul is held in pledge for its own deeds; Save those who will stand on the right hand. In gardens, they shall ask each other About the guilty: What has brought you into Hell? They shall say: “We were not among those who prayed; Nor did we feed the wretched. But we used to talk vanities with vain talkers; And we used to call the Day of Judgment a lie; Till the Inevitable came upon us”. The mediation of no mediators will avail them then. Then what is the matter with them that they turn away from the Admonition?- As if they were asses taking fright Fleeing from a lion? [9]
We understand that every soul is held in pledge for its own deeds, but the Qur’ān goes on to exclude those on the right (save those who will stand on the right hand). It seems that those on the right will not be questioned as to their deeds whereas the rest of humanity will be so asked because they are criminals. The Lord of the Qur’ān stamped this description on them in this world without waiting for the Day of Resurrection to hold them accountable and decide at that point whether they are criminals or not. When those on the right ask these others why they are in Hell, they will reply: We were not among those who prayed. This, for the third time, is the god of the Qur’ān. In its fourth sūra He says that the reason they entered the Fire is that they were not worshippers, but the prayer had not yet been obligated.
Suggested Reading
I am sorely puzzled by this dialogue taking place between the people of Paradise and the people of Hell. I do not understand how the denizens of Hell, which will be the abode of the vast majority of people, and its size greater than anything we can imagine and hundreds of degrees Celsius in temperature, and its temperature will have reached hundreds of degrees Celsius relative to its large size and the number of people suffering torment. How can the people on the right approach near enough to such a great conflagration to be able to talk to its inhabitants? And will an individual whose skin is being roasted and then replaced by God with a new one each time be able to speak to the people of the right and explain to them why he is in Hellfire?
The Lord of the Qur’ān tells us about Hell:
We have prepared a Fire which, like the (walls and roof of) a tent, will hem them in: if they implore relief they will be granted water like melted brass, that will scald their faces.[10]
In the hadith of Ibn Sa‘īd al-Khudrī, published by al-Tirmidhī, Muḥammad says:
The tent of Hellfire has four dense sides, each forty years apart in distance.
Is it conceivable for the people of the right to approach this Hell, which has four sides, to as to speak to the denizens of Hell about whom the Qur’ān says that sighing and wailing will be their portion therein.[11] The people of Hell will therefore be pre-occupied with pain, sighing and wailing which will not allow them to ‘talk’ with the people of Paradise and explain to them why they are in Hell. But it is the sadism enveloping this same author of the Qur’ān that makes him insist on delineating the nature of the humiliating torments the wrongdoers will be living through.
At the end of the sūra the god of the Qur’ān says:
Nay; every one of them desires that he may be given pages spread out; Nay! but they do not fear the Hereafter. Nay, this surely is an admonition: Let any who will, keep it in remembrance! But none will keep it in remembrance except as Allah wills: He is the Lord of Righteousness, and the Lord of Forgiveness.[12]
As usual, the writer of the Qur’ān says that man is directed but at the same time also able to choose. He says Let any who will, keep it in remembrance! but also that none will keep it in remembrance except as Allah wills.
[1] Qur’ān LXXIV (al-Muddaththir), 8-17.
[2] There is an unusual diversity in the manner that this phrase is rendered in English. Indeed, he thought and deliberated (Sahih International); Surely he did think and he determined (Dr. Ghali); For lo! he did consider; then he planned (Pickthall); For he thought and he plotted (Yusuf Ali); He reflected and then hatched a scheme (Abul Ala Maududi); He planned and plotted (Abdel Haleem). The direct meaning of the verb qaddara here is given by the dictionaries as ‘evaluate’, ‘appraise’, ‘determine’ ‘guess’, ‘presume’. There appears to be no evidence for a meaning of ‘plot’ or ‘scheme’. (Ed.)
[3] Qur’ān LXXIV (al-Muddaththir), 18-25.
[4] Qur’ān LXXIV (al-Muddaththir), 26-31.
[5] Respectively: Qur’ān LXIX (al-Ḥāqqa), 3; Qur’ān CI (al-Qāri‘a), 4; Qur’ān LXXXVI, (al-Ṭāriq), 2; Qur’ān XC (al-Balad), 12; Qur’ān LXXXIII (al-Muṭaffifīīn), 8; Qur’ān LXXXIII (al-Muṭaffifīīn), 19. The last term ‘illiyūn explained in the Qur’ān as كِتَابٌ مَرْقُومٌ ‘a written book’ appears actually to derive from the Hebrew term עֶלְיוֹן ‘elyōn ‘most highest’ featured in Isaiah 14:13–14, 2 Samuel 22:14 and Psalms 97:9, and rendered by the Greek Septuagint as ὁ Θεός ὁ ὕψιστος (‘God the highest’). The term appears to be pre-Biblical, in that Sanchuniathon’s description of the Phoenician deities includes Elioun, a deity separate from the supreme god Ēl. (Ed.)
[6] Qur’ān LXXIV (al-Muddaththir), 32-37.
[7] The taḥlīl marriage is one whereby the divorcees get round the problem of a three-times ṭalāq formula divorce by arranging for a fake ‘marriage’ to a third party for the divorced woman, so that she may in turn divorce the new ‘husband’ and then become legally qualified to remarry her first partner. (Ed.)
[8] Qur’ān LIII (al-Najm), 49. (Al-Shi‘rā is the Arabic term for Sirius).
[9] Qur’ān LXXIV (al-Muddaththir), 38-51. The term given for a ‘lion’ here (qaswara) is the subject of an interesting investigation on the possible Syriac origin of the word, and hence the original source for Qur’ānic passages. See the Almuslih articles Syriac and Aramaic origins of the Qur’ān – 1 and The Qur’anic script – some clarifications – 1 where the correct sense, unknown to the classical scholars, is: ‘As if they were wild asses taking fright, fleeing from an old donkey?’ (Ed.)
[10] Qur’ān XVIII (al-Kahf), 29.
[11] Qur’ān XI (Hūd), 106.
[12] Qur’ān LXXIV (al-Muddaththir), 52-56.
