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The second half of the Qur’an’s fifth sura continues to expound upon the wickedness of the Jews and Christians. Verses 61-86 criticize the Jews and Christians for refusing to follow Muhammad. Why don’t the Jews’ rabbis stop their evil behavior (v. 63)? They even dare to say that “Allah’s hand is fettered” (v. 64).
Allah’s hand is fettered? It is unclear what Jewish concept, if any, the Qur’an is referring to in this case. Ibn Kathir comments: “Allah states that the Jews, may Allah’s continuous curses descend on them until the Day of Resurrection, describe Him as a miser. Allah is far holier than what they attribute to Him.” He is also absolute will, with hand absolutely unfettered: Allah’s unfettered hand is a vivid image of divine freedom. Such a God can be bound by no laws. Muslim theologians argued during the long controversy with the heretical Islamic Mu‘tazilite sect, which exalted human reason beyond the point that the eventual victors were willing to tolerate, that Allah was free to act as he pleased. He was thus not bound to govern the universe according to consistent and observable laws. “He cannot be questioned concerning what He does” (Qur’an 21:23).
Accordingly, there was no point to observing the workings of the physical world; there was no reason to expect that any pattern to its workings would be consistent, or even discernible. If Allah could not be counted on to be consistent, why waste time observing the order of things? It could change tomorrow. Stanley Jaki, a Catholic priest and physicist, explains that it was the renowned Sufi thinker al-Ghazali who “denounced natural laws, the very objective of science, as a blasphemous constraint upon the free will of Allah.” The great twelfth-century Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides explained orthodox Islamic cosmology in similar terms, noting that Islamic thinkers of his day assumed “the possibility that an existing being should be larger or smaller than it really is, or that it should be different in form and position from what it really is; e.g., a man might have the height of a mountain, might have several heads, and fly in the air; or an elephant might be as small as an insect, or an insect as huge as an elephant. This method of admitting possibilities is applied to the whole Universe.”
Relatively early in its history, therefore, science was deprived in the Islamic world of the philosophical foundation it needed in order to flourish. It found that philosophical foundation only in Christian Europe, where it was assumed that God was good and had constructed the universe according to consistent and observable laws. Such an idea would have been for pious Muslims tantamount to saying, “Allah’s hand is fettered.”
Verse 64 also says that whenever the Jews “kindle the fire of war, Allah doth extinguish it.” That is, says the Tafsir al-Jalalayn, “war against the Prophet(s).” According to Bulandshahri, “The Jews make every effort to instigate wars against the Muslims, but Allah foils their attempts each time, either by instilling terror in their hearts or by their defeat in these battles.” The Jews also “strive to do mischief on earth” – that is, fasaad (فَسَاد) – for which the punishment is specified in v. 33: “they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land.”
Verses 66, 68 and 69 exhort the Jews and Christians to follow what is written in the Torah and Gospel, and promises Paradise to those who do so. This is not (as it is often represented) a manifestation of ecumenical generosity, but rather an expression of the Qur’an’s assumption that it confirms the message of the earlier books, which prophesied Muhammad’s coming. Ibn Kathir tells Jews and Christians that they will have “no real religion until you adhere to and implement the Tawrah [Torah] and the Injil [Gospel]. That is, until you believe in all the Books that you have that Allah revealed to the Prophets. These Books command following Muhammad and believing in his prophecy, all the while adhering to his Law.”
V. 72 repeats the denial of the divinity of Christ – and the labeling of those who believe in it as “unbelievers” – of v. 17, and v. 73 repeats the denial of the doctrine of the Trinity from 4:171. Jesus and his mother are again presented as the other members of the divine trio with Allah, but they were mortal: they both used to eat earthly food (v. 75) – “like all other human beings,” says the Tafsir al-Jalalayn, and one who is such cannot be a god because of his compound being and fallible nature, and because of the [impurities such as] urine and excrement that he produces.” The actual Christian concept of the Incarnation, with Christ being both fully God and fully human, doesn’t enter into consideration.
Meanwhile, for their part the disbelieving Jews are cursed by both David and Jesus for their disobedience (v. 78). The Muslims will find that these Jews are their fiercest enemies, while those closest to them in affection will be the Christians (v. 82). According to the Ma’alimut Tanzil, this verse doesn’t refer to all Christians, but only to those who accept Islam; this is made clear by verses 83 and 84, in which those Christians accept Muhammad’s message.
Verses 87-108 establish various regulations for the Muslims. Among them is the directive that one who breaks an oath must in expiation feed ten indigents or free a slave (v. 88). Verses 90-91 say that alcohol and gambling are “Satan’s handiwork” – and thus definitively forbidden. Muslims are warned in verses 101-102 not to “ask questions about things which, if made plain to you, may cause you trouble. But if ye ask about things when the Qur’an is being revealed, they will be made plain to you, Allah will forgive those.” However, “some people before you did ask such questions, and on that account lost their faith.” Which may explain the touchiness of some imams when asked questions.
Verses 109-120 return to Jesus, emphasizing his status as a prophet of Allah, who did all his mighty works by order of Allah – and is thus not God himself. The miracle of the clay birds becoming live ones (v. 110) is found in the second-century Gnostic text the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. It’s likely that Gnostics had left the Eastern Roman Empire, where they faced persecution, and settled in Arabia. Verses 112-115 give the chapter its name, recounting when Jesus asked Allah for a table laden with food from heaven, which would be “a solemn festival and a sign from thee” (v. 114). This appears to be a vestige of the Christian Eucharist: the consuming of the Body and Blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine, which was central to all Christian groups in Muhammad’s time. In v. 116, Allah asks Jesus directly: “O Jesus, son of Mary! Didst thou say unto mankind: Take me and my mother for two gods beside Allah?” Jesus, of course, denies having done so. Those who believe otherwise will be punished.
Next week: Sura 6, “Cattle”: Allah consoles Muhammad.
(Here you can find links to all the earlier "Blogging the Qur'an" segments. Here is a good Arabic Qur’an, with English translations available; here are two popular Muslim translations, those of Abdullah Yusuf Ali and Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, along with a third by M. H. Shakir. Here is another popular translation, that of Muhammad Asad. And here is an omnibus of ten Qur’an translations.)
Posted by Robert at September 24, 2007 7:11 AM
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Any chance your Qur'an blogging will make it to a print version?
Posted by: DJM![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at September 24, 2007 7:39 AM
It better.
Posted by: Hugh at September 24, 2007 8:58 AM
Robert Spencer's commentary on part of Sura 5 above offers one important example of a Qur'anic passage in which the conception of Allah (whose had is "not" fettered) helped discourage the development of science:
"Allah’s hand is fettered? It is unclear what Jewish concept, if any, the Qur’an is referring to in this case. Ibn Kathir comments: “Allah states that the Jews, may Allah’s continuous curses descend on them until the Day of Resurrection, describe Him as a miser. Allah is far holier than what they attribute to Him.” He is also absolute will, with hand absolutely unfettered: Allah’s unfettered hand is a vivid image of divine freedom. Such a God can be bound by no laws. Muslim theologians argued during the long controversy with the heretical Islamic Mu‘tazilite sect, which exalted human reason beyond the point that the eventual victors were willing to tolerate, that Allah was free to act as he pleased. He was thus not bound to govern the universe according to consistent and observable laws. “He cannot be questioned concerning what He does” (Qur’an 21:23).
Accordingly, there was no point to observing the workings of the physical world; there was no reason to expect that any pattern to its workings would be consistent, or even discernable. If Allah could not be counted on to be consistent, why waste time observing the order of things? It could change tomorrow. Stanley Jaki, a Catholic priest and physicist, explains that it was the renowned Sufi thinker al-Ghazali who 'denounced natural laws, the very objective of science, as a blasphemous constraint upon the free will of Allah.' The great twelfth-century Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides explained orthodox Islamic cosmology in similar terms, noting that Islamic thinkers of his day assumed 'the possibility that an existing being should be larger or smaller than it really is, or that it should be different in form and position from what it really is; e.g., a man might have the height of a mountain, might have several heads, and fly in the air; or an elephant might be as small as an insect, or an insect as huge as an elephant. This method of admitting possibilities is applied to the whole Universe.'
Relatively early in its history, therefore, science was deprived in the Islamic world of the philosophical foundation it needed in order to flourish. It found that philosophical foundation only in Christian Europe, where it was assumed that God was good and had constructed the universe according to consistent and observable laws. Such an idea would have been for pious Muslims tantamount to saying, 'Allah’s hand is fettered.'"
And the overall conception of man, mere mortal man, as someone whose role is never to question Allah's decisions -- his whim be done -- or seek to explain them through investigation, also discourages the advancement of science. For if man is to be an unquestioning "slave of Allah" then any questioning, any free and skeptical inquiry about anything at all, immediately suggests someone who is not willing to be merely a Good Muslim, but wishes to be something else. And that is dangerous. And this discouragement of that free and skeptical inquiry has observable consequences outside the non-developoment of science after the first few centuries of Islam (about which more below). It has been noted how Muslim peoples are particularly susceptible to every kind of rumor and conspiracy theory, and this should not surprise. For those who are raised in societies or families suffused with Islam, who are discouraged or even punished for exercising their critical powers, are unlikely to be used to exercising them in the political sphere as well. And since the Infidels are the enemy, helping to lead Muslims astray (those "whisperings of Shaytan") and helping to bloc the rightful spread of Islam until it covers the globe and dominates everywhere, it is natural that those conspiracy theories will always and everywhere come back to blaming Infidels. There is no doubt that whatever Sunnis do to Shi'a, and Shi'a do to Sunnis, and no matter how many men were sacrificed to prevent exactly that Sunni-Shi'a warfare, and how many hundreds of billions of dollars spent on good works, or the attempt to do good works, for the sake of "the Iraqi people," by the Americans, they will be blamed, for anything and everything that is considered by Muslims to have damaged Muslims, and not only in Iraq -- but everywhere. Do the Lords of Misrule in Egypt and Saudi Arabia continue, as Muslim rulers always do, to exact their tribute by corruption, by diversion of foreign aid in the case of Egypt, or theft of national wealth, as in the case of the Al-Saud in Saudi Arabia? Of course. But the party to be blamed, in the end, will be "the Americans" because it is "the Americans" who are the Infidels. In Iran, whom do even reformist-minded Muslims blame for the Islamic Republic of Iran? Oh, they go back more than a half-century, to the Anglo-American coup against Mossadegh, and allow themselves to believe that, "but for" that coup, Islam would never have emerged again as a power, under the unsettling effect of the great oil wealth. But they are wrong. Islam was certain to come back for Islam is what defines, what regulates, what controls, the primitive masses, if not the lycee-attending courtiers of the Shah in Teheran.
Now, someone will ask: but what about the growth of science, what about the early contributions to optics, for example, of people in high Islamic civilization? What about it? Study carefully how long that "flourishing" of Islamic science took place. Remove, first of all, those developments for which credit has been claimed for "Islamic civilization" but which were clearly borrowed from others -- such as algebra and the zero from Sanskrit mathematicians, or paper-making -- see Dard Hunter -- from China. Now look at the actual identities of those who, though they have entered history with Arab names too often confused with Muslim ones, were in fact Christians or Jews. Now look at those who remain on your list of scientists, and find out how many were, though converts to Islam, one or at most two generations removed from being Christians or Jews, and grew up in a milieu heavily influenced by, and still in large part consisting of, Christians and Jews (if Islam were to become dominant through demographic conquest in Europe, for a long while after the old ways of thought would still be present, not yet extinguished as long as the non-Muslim population remained significant). And finally, ask how many of the dozen or two dozen figures in the history of science under Islam were either freethinkers, in danger of persecution (including ar-Rhazi, the most famous of the Muslim scientists), or were non-Arabs, and so had another identity, that did not reinforce but worked against Islam.
Do that, and you will see that the dying out of "Islamic science" -- see Toby Huff (and see the huffing and puffing against Toby Huff by the comical Defender of Islam, the hysterical George Saliba)-- is not a mystery, but can be explained.
Robert offers, in his commentary above, one of the important Qur'anic passages that demonstrates the Muslim conception of Allah that prevented the development of science. I have merely added a demographic, or sociological, addendum, to explain that early, and short-lived, development of science under Islamic rule, almmost entirely either by non-Muslims or by non-Arab Muslims, or by those whose views on Islam skirted the heretical, and then some.
Posted by: Hugh at September 24, 2007 9:59 AM
I think the word 'fettered' is misspelled, it should say 'fetid', which means: having an offensive odor; stinking.
From article: Allah’s hand is fettered? It is unclear what Jewish concept, if any, the Qur’an is referring to in this case.
Now you know...The ancient Jews were no dummy's, they knew that Mohammads invention Allah, stunk from the beginning. 'Fetid' may not be their description, but it fits...
Posted by: duh_swami at September 24, 2007 11:35 AM
O Jesus, son of Mary! Didst thou say unto mankind: Take me and my mother for two gods beside Allah?
Well, Jesus didn't say this in the Christian Bible, either. Either Mohammed didn't know Christianity as well as he thought, or Mohammed's beating a straw man. Mary is not considered divine, as a god, in any Christian religion I know of. And I'm Roman Catholic :)
If the problem is the former, then Mohammed is clearly in error here -- and according to the Koran's claim of infallibility, the whole thing falls apart.
BTW, some of the other commenters on Hot Air mentioned the spiritually draining aspect of reading the Koran -- I have the same experience.
Posted by: Troll King at September 24, 2007 11:51 AM
Both Robert and Hugh have aptly linked Surah 5:64 passage to the Western concept that the universe is "fettered" by consistent and observable laws, a concept unimaginable in Islam where Allah can do what He wants without restriction.
There are two other aspects of the passage that are worth noting -- Allah's implied superiority over the God of the Jews and Allah's relationship to his followers who are called "slaves."
Whereas the God of the Judeo-Christian religion created the universe in six days and rested, Allah created it six days but didn't need to take a rest. (See 7:54 and 10:3) So Allah one-upped Yahweh. There is no concept of a Sabbath or day of rest in Islam. (See 62:9)
The other implication of 5:62 has to do with the beneficence of Allah. The rejoinder to Jews' statement that "Allah's hand is fettered" is "Nay, but both his hands are spread out wide in bounty. He bestoweth as He will." But Allah does not bestow things generously on his slaves. This can be seen in the abject poverty of most of the Muslim countries. Why wouldn't he be more generous to his followers? The answer is found in 44:27: "And if Allah were to enlarge the provision for His slaves, they would surly rebel in the earth, but He sendeth down by measures as He willeth." (Pickthall)
The Islamic concept of Allah as a master over his slaves stands in stark contrast to the Christian concept of God being a "father" who loves and cares for his "children" without reservation. (See Romans 8:14-17)
Posted by: Chris at September 24, 2007 12:08 PM
Apparently Allah's hand is fettered since he can't possibly be both God and Man.
Posted by: Mr Ape Pig at September 24, 2007 2:14 PM
Robert,
I'm no Qur'an expert, but I've long assumed that the "fettered hand" reference is to the doctrine found in Lamentations 2: 3, that G-d has withdrawn His hand from before the enemy -- in other words, that when Israel is defeated, this signifies that G-d is allowing the defeat by voluntarily restraining His protective power. In rabbinic and kabbalistic developments, this becomes connected with the view that G-d enters into exile along with Israel -- "I am with him in suffering" (Psalm 91: 15) -- and that G-d's full power in the world can only be manifest once again when Israel makes this manifestation possible. In short, G-d voluntarily limits Himself by making His own power in the world depend on human action, which therefore takes on a central role in the cosmic narrative. That this doctrine empowers human action in politics, science, etc., can easily be argued.
Paul
at September 24, 2007 11:23 PM
I try to remember to thank God everyday for letting me find this site.
Thank you Heavenly Father for JH and crew!
Posted by: Drewbenstein at September 25, 2007 7:13 PM
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