Surah al-Bayyinah

[fireheart47]

Dear QM Forum,

I'd like to share some perspective on a chapter of the Qur'an, which I find important. Do you all have any thoughts on this subject or these verses?

Surah al-Baqarah 2:2

ذَٰلِكَ ٱلْكِتَـٰبُ لَا رَيْبَ فِيهِ هُدًى لِّلْمُتَّقِينَ

Dhālika Al-Kitābu Lā Rayba Fīhi, Hudáan Lilmuttaqīna

Sahih International

This is the Book about which there is no doubt, a guidance for those conscious of Allah

Surah al-Baqarah 2:3

ٱلَّذِينَ يُؤْمِنُونَ بِٱلْغَيْبِ وَيُقِيمُونَ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَمِمَّا رَزَقْنَـٰهُمْ يُنفِقُونَ

Al-Ladhīna Yu'uminūna Bil-Ghaybi Wa Yuqīmūna Aş-Şalāata Wa Mimmā Razaqnāhum Yunfiqūna 

Sahih Intl.

Who believe in the unseen, establish prayer, and spend out of what We have provided for them

Surah Maryam 19:30

قَالَ إِنِّى عَبْدُ ٱللَّهِ ءَاتَىٰنِىَ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ وَجَعَلَنِى نَبِيًّا

Sahih Intl.

[Jesus] said, "Indeed, I am the servant of Allah . He has given me the Scripture and made me a prophet.

Surah Maryam 19:31

وَجَعَلَنِى مُبَارَكًا أَيْنَ مَا كُنتُ وَأَوْصَـٰنِى بِٱلصَّلَوٰةِ وَٱلزَّكَوٰةِ مَا دُمْتُ حَيًّا

And He has made me blessed wherever I am and has enjoined upon me prayer and zakah as long as I remain alive

Surah al-Bayyinah 98:5

وَمَآ أُمِرُوٓا۟ إِلَّا لِيَعْبُدُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ مُخْلِصِينَ لَهُ ٱلدِّينَ حُنَفَآءَ وَيُقِيمُوا۟ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَيُؤْتُوا۟ ٱلزَّكَوٰةَ وَذَٰلِكَ دِينُ ٱلْقَيِّمَةِ

And they were not commanded except to worship Allah , [being] sincere to Him in religion, inclining to truth, and to establish prayer and to give zakah. And that is the correct religion.

An excerpt of Surah al-Bayyinah 98:6

شَرُّ ٱلْبَرِيَّةِ

worst of creatures

Another excerpt from Surah al-Bayyinah 98:7

خَيْرُ ٱلْبَرِيَّةِ

best of creatures

(Source: http://islamicity.org and http://allahsquran.com )

Torah Chumash (The Instruction, The Five [Books]), Bereshit (Book of Genesis)

בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ

The Contemporary Torah, JPS, 2006

When God began to create heaven and earth—

Excerpt from Genesis 1:1

ברא

to create

(Source: http://sefaria.org and http://tanach.us )

Matthew 22:37-39

BibliaTodo Interlinear original Greek: https://www.bibliatodo.com/en/interlinear/matthew-22-37

Dukhrana Peshitta Analysis (I search "Dukhrana Peshitta Analysis Matthew 22:37" on DuckDuckGO search engine): https://www.dukhrana.com/peshitta/analyze_verse.php?lang=en&verse=Matthew+22:37&source=ubs

The word

دِينُ

from end of Surah al-Bayyinah 98:5 has multiple meanings, it can mean religion, but also judgement. Rabbi Friedman gave a lecture on YouTube about Yom HaDin, where he clarifies judgement. He said it is not only punishment, it is also reward, it is not being found guilty, but also being found innocent. He said it is justice, and it is a fair trial. He said the Jewish people should have faith that all their suffering will be taken into account. I think this applies also to every soul on Earth. I believe an all-knowing God will be merciful and will take into account all the complexities of our life.

The concept of "Deen" bares a lot of similarity to the concept of Ma'at in Ancient Egypt, which is said by some to be depicted by the scales of justice and a personification, which is said to be the archetype from where angels depicted in human-form popular in Christianity originated. That would be very interesting from a historical perspective if true!

The word

ٱلزَّكَوٰةَ

also has interesting connotations. It is a concept, which I believe we can personally live out, yet it also has more legalistic definitions for how organized religion deals with the real complications of managing money and other goods to give to the needy.

Fireheart47

[fireheart47]

This topic causes me to reflect on the modern implications of this seemingly universal concept of the importance of prayer and the Golden Rule.

The modern implications have been the conflict which started in Europe in the 1700s or earlier, because of the terrible conditions of the common people, who were made to work in factories and other dangerous places at the beginning of the industrial age. There were women, children and men being harmed, and it caused dysfunction in society. The people who wanted to make life better for them were called socialists. Many of them were Christian, and wanted the authorities (religious, political) to do something to protect them from harm. Unfortunately, the religious authorities were either in ignorance (no computers and internet back then), hypocritical, or limited in their abilities.

Because of this conflict, many socialist thinkers began to criticize religion, and see it as simply myth, societal and mind-control, and not wisdom. In their utopian vision of the future, they wanted to replace religion with something more human and more physical: the government. Many differed in opinions, yet some of the socialists came to certain agreements and formed what we know as communism, and its many varieties. One of the agreements they came to is the importance of international cooperation among workers to try to overthrow their oppressors. However, because they abandoned religion, they did not believe in the Golden Rule, nor any universal law which protects human life. They became the new oppressors, justifying when they killed human life.

Other groups formed, because people weren't all the same. Benito Mussolini was the son of an anarchist, and he went to a boarding school, and had tendencies which did not conform to the ideals of thinkers around him. They rejected him, yet he wasn't just a victim, he had selfish ambitions of becoming great in the eyes of others and powerful. He created a newspaper, and he received help from England, who wanted Italy to join WW1. His new type of socialism kept the old ideas of a king-like leader, the national pride and stories of ancient Rome. It was also very militaristic, and supported war. He himself was possibly inspired by lesser-known predecessors before him, who caused massive protests and believed in many contrarian ideas.

In Germany, a wounded soldier became a spy for a new socialist group, which seemed threatening. The person was Adolf Hitler, and they had spent time reading fanciful magazines, which talked about a romantic mysterious past, and a superior angelic master-race. He ended up leaving his mission somehow, and joined the group he was tasked with spying on. His hateful words and long speeches caused people to be interested, yet they also inspired people to do terrible things to innocent people. He used his authority then to continue this and caused more wars, despite preaching about peace. From the beginning, him and the people around him were also militaristic and supported war.

Many people think about these leaders, who misled, and forget about the many people around them, which manipulated them for their own gain. Dictators are in many ways perfect for people who don't want to be held accountable. People also forget about the role of the military establishment in these events, which sought benefit from their pro-military politics, and who also played a role in causing the trauma experienced in WW1, which caused a deep-rooted ignorance, which manifested in beliefs in outlandish ideas, hypocrisies and contradictions, and inhumane worldviews and actions.

For example, I remember seeing in a documentary a racist publication which portrayed itself as biblically destined to attack the Jewish, ordained by God, by using a verse Book of Jeremiah 5:15 as their slogan, which says a foreign nation will attack the House of Israel. Yet in that same chapter, in Jeremiah 5:11 it distinguishes the House of Israel from the House of Judah, the origin of Jewish people. And the reason the House of Israel is threatened is because of its polytheism and worship of foreign deities. The irony.

(potential source: The Black Sun by Rüdiger Sünner [documentary about roots of Nazi ideologies])

The National Socialist party also did not know or did not acknowledge the linguistic evidence, which suggests the Germanic runes developed from Carthaginian Alephbet as proposed by Theo Vennemann and other linguists. Nor did the Italians acknowledge the role of the African ancient Egypt, which provided Roman culture with its columned temples, which were originally based off of natural observations of palm trees and papyrus reeds.

This all ties back to our collective sins of not practicing our religion and allowing poverty and war to shape the world around us. Our sin of hiding the truth and promoting ideas which contribute to dogmatic and harmful thinking and behavior, causing others to dislike religion and the people who hurt them.

This history is a lesson for us, because yesterday it was Italian and German people, but tomorrow and perhaps today it is some other group, who will be similarly misled into destruction. Italian and German culture have made and still make amazing contributions to religion (Latin Bible, Gothic Bible, Renaissance, Martin Luther Bible, Saarbrücken Schools of Islamic studies, House of One, Wilhelm Barthlott, Christoph Luxenberg, etc...).

It is a blessing media technology developed during this time for us to have so much evidence of the past, which enables us to compare it to the present moment, and to avoid similar mistakes.

Fireheart47

[fireheart47]

Dear QM Forum,

This excerpt from Surah al-Bayyinah 98:6, is sometimes troublesome for me:

فِى نَارِ جَهَنَّمَ خَـٰلِدِينَ فِيهَآ

Fī Nāri Jahannama Khālidīna Fīhā

will be in the fire of Hell, abiding eternally therein

The word جهنم is similar to the word Gehenna, which also found in the Bible in Greek with similar meaning (Gospel of Matthew 10:28). Its origin, Hinnom, is also found in Hebrew Bible, where it is described multiple times as a place where children were sacrificed by fire (Book of Jeremiah 7:31). The Valley of Hinnom is a north-facing valley outside of Jerusalem, so it does not get as much sunlight. Considering the geology of Israel/Palestine and Jordan, it could be a fissure, part of the greater tectonic fault.

The translation "hell" is from Germanic cosmology, first used by Wulfila in the Gothic Bible "halja" as an equivalent for the Greek "hades" used in the Bible. Yes, the Greek deity, which represented the underworld. The original Germanic concept of hell was a cold afterlife destiny. Whereas Hades seems to be associated with fire, which could be due to climate and geography. For example, near Greece there are many volcanoes. Likewise, in Arabia near Medina there also many volcanoes.

Both hades and hell seem to originally represent death, and in the Bible it is also used this way (Acts of the Apostles 2:27). (Source: https://www.christianpublishers.org/post/what-is-the-biblical-understanding-of-sheol)

Across many cultures, the physical world is used to describe different emotions, and complex ideas. In many Native American cultures (ex: Ojibwe, Yucatan), there is a water panther, which governs the underworld. The panther is one of the largest predatory animals, and therefore represents danger. When projected into the watery underground places, it could symbolize a place of danger. The underground is where all life decays towards, and is where there is no freedom of movement, no light, and high risk of being trapped and dying. From what I understand, in ancient Egyptian cosmology, Apep plays a similar role, and represents watery chaos and annihilation below the desert.

Likewise, the sky often represents freedom and a higher power. The stars fill us with imagination and good feelings. In Hebrew the word מזל (Mazl, like Mazl Tov [Hebrew: Good Fortune]) can also mean stars, similar to how people think of horoscopes and astrology.

Birds, which fly in the sky, sometimes represent positive ideas. Bird feathers, for example, are used in ancient Egyptian culture, particularly Nubian culture, and in Native American cultures as a symbol for higher ideals. The feather in the Book of Coming Forth by Day (Book of the Dead) is shown on one side of the scales of justice, and a heart on the other. The feather is also seen in the Book of Coming Forth by Day on the heads of a group of people. For ancient Egyptians, pictures were their language, therefore the feather has a deeper meaning.

However not all birds in cultures represent good, there are also ideas of Thunderbirds, which in the Pacific Northwest of the USA, was found to represent an earthquake and tsunami. There are many other exceptions. This is the limitation of using symbols in nature to describe metaphysical and emotional truths.

In Abrahamic religions, heaven also represents the best place. In Hebrew, it is the abode of God and the angels. The Hebrew שמים (Shamayim) is related to the Arabic word سماء (sama'). In English, heaven is the best  afterlife destiny. However, heaven as the afterlife destiny in the religion of Islam is جنة (jannah), which means gardens. This is similar to the English word "paradise", which originally meant gardens in Persian. These ideas are very important, especially if we seek reward and things, which we are not given by other people in this world.

In Surah ash-Shu'arah, the people are warned to be aware of the source of their "gardens and springs"(Surah ash-Shu'arah 26:134), various times, and those who warned them are accused of magic (Surah ash-Shu'arah 26:153), just like Jesus was accused of using evil magic by the Pharisees (Gospel of Matthew 12:24).

I've heard it said that Jewish people don't believe in hell or heaven, like Christians and Muslims do. Yet, after studying a few chapters in the TaNaKh, I believe this isn't entirely true. I believe the Hebrews were much like the Native Americans, and projected complex ideas onto the physical realm. The concept of Sheol (שעול) seems to mostly represent the underworld, which was death, our eventual fate, rather than one of two destinies of the afterlife. Yet, there are some verses, which show the connection between destructive behaviors and Sheol (Proverbs Chapter 7 [adultery]). Adultery is one of the sins of the 10 commandments , which is not directly in Qur'an, however there some verse where lists of commandments are made, which are similar. Perhaps someone knowledgeable could help me find them again.

And so, my problem with the first aformentioned verse, Surah al-Bayyinah 98:6, has to do with how people mistreat others and threaten them with hell, or manipulate people with the threat of hell, without using reason to understand the destructive behaviors.

After I finished reading the New Testament, I believe that the concept of sin was created to explain a reality, where our behaviors do not meet the expectations of life, and therefore contribute to suffering. The commandments were created from observations about life. For example, the impact of murder on ancient societies and how it caused many problems, and destroys the most precious thing on this planet.

I believe we can be perfect in the eyes of God, in the sense that God can accept us as we are and that this idea can bring us peace. However, we can still not meet the expectations of life by making wrong choices, and that is sin.

I believe once we are unburdened by shame and can live in the present moment, having faith that our sins can be forgiven, we are more capable of changing. Because shame can often make us feel tainted or irredeemable, which causes us to suffer and continue destructive behaviors. If we let go of the past, we can live in the present moment and become aware of God's mercy, and live our lives a better way.

In my life, I have experienced something like karma. I would begin to struggle and it would remind me of something bad I did in the past, causing me to reflect on my actions. Later, I reasoned that it was a blessing for me to experience a complicated consequence or a retribution from God for my actions earlier in my life, because otherwise it would come slowly and I would never be prepared for it nor be able to perceive it, causing more suffering in ignorance. Yet, I am very blessed, and the struggles contribute to new types of blessings, like the direction of my education towards Bible and Qur'an.

In European cultures, they portrayed something similar: the wheel of fortune. However, it seems not everybody experiences consequences in this lifetime, and I don't know why. The Book of Job is like a Hebrew philosophical debate around the idea of suffering in this life, and seems to suggest the best way to deal with it is to accept that we don't know and to have faith and continue worshiping God, despite our struggles.

God knows, I don't. God controls our destiny. God is the creator and destroyer, yet I believe God wants to create more, because of the blessings we receive by taking care of God's creation.

Just like a hospital services the needs of people in this life, so can a garden. Especially in these cities which contribute to our ailments and aren't healthy places for us to live. I don't believe we should have to wait until the afterlife to receive basic needs. Yet, there is so much that is out of our control and we should be ready to confront it and lose. From dust to dust. I believe shouldn't try to make utopia, and kill or hurt in the process, rather a better world should emerge from the simple goodness between individuals, particularly those closest to each other. If life is a game where we all lose, why do bad things trying win? If we all lose, then its about how we play the game. (Source: Level 42 - The Way Back Home)

Thanks for reading my perspective,
Fireheart47