Blogging the Qur’an: Sura 13, “The Thunder”
posted at 8:00 am on January 27, 2008 by Robert Spencer
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This sura dates, like suras 6, 7, 10, 11, and 12, from late in the Meccan period, the first period of Muhammad’s career as a prophet. Its name comes a phrase in v. 13, “the thunder repeats his praises.” Its main theme is summed up by v. 1, in which Allah tells Muhammad, “These are the signs” — ayat, verses – “of the Book: that which hath been revealed unto thee from thy Lord is the Truth; but most men believe not.”
Ibn Kathir sees the four Arabic letters that begin this chapter, and similar unexplained letters beginning many suras of the Qur’an, as confirmation of its miraculous character: “Every Surah that starts with separate letters affirms that the Qur’an is miraculous and is an evidence that it is a revelation from Allah, and that there is no doubt or denying in this fact.” Despite the mystery of these letters, however, he goes on to assert that the Qur’an is “clear, plain and unequivocal,” and that “most men will still not believe, due to their rebellion, stubbornness and hypocrisy.” The Tafsir al-Jalalayn and the Tanwîr al-Miqbâs min Tafsîr Ibn ‘Abbâs say that the “most people” who will not believe according to v. 1 are the people of Mecca.
In what should they believe? Verses 2-19 emphasize Allah’s power in all things. Allah “raised the heavens without any pillars that ye can see” (v. 2) – a physical image that Ibn Kathir expands upon in a physical way: “The distance between the first heaven and the earth is five hundred years from every direction, and its thickness is also five hundred years. The second heaven surrounds the first heaven from every direction, encompassing everything that the latter carries, with a thickness also of five hundred years and a distance between them of five hundred years.”
This is not to say that Islam envisions a physical Allah – the Allah whom “no vision can grasp” (6:103) and who is “nearer than the jugular vein” (50:16) is not physical, but this is the subject of some Sunni-Shi’ite polemics. Some argue that even though Allah is nearer than the jugular vein, he is not everywhere. Some modern Muslims argue that to affirm otherwise would be to fall into pantheism and shirk: the association of partners with Allah, the cardinal sin in Islam. They argue this from the fact that Allah has “mounted the Throne” (v. 2; also 7:54). The Imam Abul Hasan al-Ash’ari (874-936) argued against the claim of the rationalist-minded Mu’tazilite sect that this verse meant that Allah was everywhere. “If it were as they asserted,” he asked, “then what difference would there be between the Throne and the earth?” And the tenth century scholar of hadith Ibn Khuzaymah declared: “Whoever does not affirm that Allah is above His heavens, upon His Throne and that He is distinct from His creation; must be forced to repent. If he does not repent, then he must be beheaded and then thrown into a garbage dump, so that the Muslims and the Ahl-Dhimma (the Christians and the Jew) will not suffer from his stinking smell.”
In all of creation are “signs for those who consider” (v. 3). Verses 2-4, 8-13, and 16-17 see his power in creation: the sun and moon are subject to him (v. 2, a verse to ponder for those who equate Allah with the moon god); he sees all things (vv. 8-9); he shows mankind “the lightning, by way both of fear and of hope” (v. 13). But the unbelievers, perverse as ever, ask Muhammad “to hasten on the evil in preference to the good” (v. 6) – that is, they ask him in derision to bring divine chastisements upon them, according to the Tanwîr al-Miqbâs min Tafsîr Ibn ‘Abbâs, and demand miracles (v. 7). Each believer, meanwhile is guarded by angels (v. 11). Ibn Kathir says that there are four: two guards, one in back and one in front, and two who record the Muslim’s good and bad deeds. The believer greets the recording angels during prayer, turning to his right and left shoulder and saying each time, “Peace be upon you.”
The same verse suggests that people really do have free will: “Allah does not change a people’s lot unless they change what is in their hearts” (v. 11). The Tafsir al-Jalalayn explains: “He does not deprive them of His grace — unless they have altered the state of their souls, from [their] comely nature, through an act of disobedience.” Yet it is hard to see how this fits in with the idea that “had Allah willed, He could have guided all mankind” (v. 31); “those whom Allah leaves to stray, no one can guide” (v. 33); and other passages that state that one’s belief or unbelief is up to Allah (10:99-100). In Islamic history the idea of free will was early on declared heretical. The twelfth-century Hanbali jurist Ibn Abi Ya’la describes the Qadari sect, which affirmed free will: “They are those who claim that they possess in full the capacity to act (al-istitâ`a), free will (al-mashî’a), and effective power (al-qudra). They consider that they hold in their grasp the ability to do good and evil, avoid harm and obtain benefit, obey and disobey, and be guided or misguided. They claim that human beings retain full initiative, without any prior status within the will of Allâh for their acts, nor even in His knowledge of them. Their doctrine is similar to that of Zoroastrians and Christians. It is the very root of heresy.”
Verses 20-43 repeat familiar themes: the righteous will enter Paradise (vv. 20-24, 35); those who break Allah’s covenant are accursed (v. 25); the unbelievers demand a sign (v. 27) and will be punished in this world and the next (v. 34); the unbelievers ascribe partners to Allah (v. 33) and reject part of the Qur’an (v. 36), while the believers do the opposite. V. 31, with its reference to “a Qur’an with which mountains were moved, or the earth were cloven asunder, or the dead were made to speak,” refers to the unbelievers’ demand for a miracle. The Tafsir al-Jalalayn explains that it was “revealed when they said to him, ‘If you are [truly] a prophet, then make these mountains of Mecca drift away before us, and make for us rivers and springs in it, that we may plant and sow seeds, and resurrect for us our dead fathers to speak to us and tell us that you are a prophet.” But even if those things happened, they still wouldn’t believe.
The Tafsir al-Jalalayn says that the phrase “Allah doth blot out or confirm what He pleaseth: with Him is the Mother of the Book” (v. 39) refers to the Qur’an: “God effaces, of it [the Book], whatever He will and He fixes therein whatever He will of rulings or other matters, and with Him is the Mother of the Book, its [source of] origin, of which nothing is ever changed, and which consists of what He inscribed in pre-eternity (azal).” This remains the orthodox view of the Qur’an: that it is a perfect, unchanging copy of the Mother of the Book that has existed forever with Allah.
Next week: Sura 14, “Abraham”: “And you will see the sinners that day bound together in fetters; their garments of liquid pitch, and their faces covered with Fire.”
(Here you can find links to all the earlier “Blogging the Qur’an” segments. Here is a good Arabic/English Qur’an, 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.)
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So considerate…
amkun on January 27, 2008 at 8:11 AM
The storm clouds are indeed building.
davidk on January 27, 2008 at 8:22 AM
Santa Claus is Muslim?
davidk on January 27, 2008 at 8:25 AM
Robert et al -
I was wondering if you’d seen this letter in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal and if it sounded ominous to you too:
WTF?
saint kansas on January 27, 2008 at 9:40 AM
How do Islamic scholars square this with passages in the Quran that refer to contemporary events?
flipflop on January 27, 2008 at 10:04 AM
Speaking of “heavens”, see: Seventh Heaven.
Shy Guy on January 27, 2008 at 10:17 AM
Thanks for posting these blogs on the Quran.
If you are suspicious of any group (religious, political, ect), go listen to what they preach and form an opinion from that.
RobCon on January 27, 2008 at 11:12 AM
Barry Obama is the biological son of a Muslim father. His choice to be muslim was made before he was born. There is no going back. It’s not common knowledge yet, but he has to be marked an apostate by the Islamic preacher sect or they aren’t doing their jobs.
pc on January 27, 2008 at 11:20 AM
Very interesting stuff on Barracko, PC. I’ve heard this before. I wonder why the thugs/killers of islam don’t publish this more? You’d think they’d want to kill him as a high profile case to prove their point about their hideous cult!
countywolf on January 27, 2008 at 11:27 AM
I’m pretty sure the Dhimmi are not permitted to interpret the Koran, so he’s reminding us of that. Because “it will be better for all of us” that way. Veiled threat? Probably.
forest on January 27, 2008 at 11:53 AM
None of this issue of his background is his fault. That is the beauty and dare I say prophetic aspect to this man’s existence. He’s a walking paradox. He’s Allah v Human Authors of the Magna Carter. Looking ahead say around 2012, the trial of modern history could be taking place on the world stage. The biggest argument among men of the cloth since Jesus’s tribulations and Obama would be at the center. I’m telling you, this might be the magic Senator.
pc on January 27, 2008 at 11:59 AM
Very interesting Sura and commentary. Thanks again for the effort, Mr Spencer!
Ibn Kathir says:
Early shades of Michael Drosnin? Hidden messages and meaning buried under the text of the Quran? Mr Spencer, is there such a thing as a ‘mystical’ sect of Islam that practices a form of numerology for hidden meaning in the Quranic text, much like the Bible had with the likes of Ivan Panin, or his modern disciple Chuck Missler?
HeIsSailing on January 27, 2008 at 12:03 PM
Or you might say followers of the Occult Koran v followers of the Magna Carter.
pc on January 27, 2008 at 12:04 PM
13:27 -
In other words, sit down, shut up, don’t ask any questions and accept it.
Mr Spencer, forgive me for asking silly questions, but I live in a relative Muslim-Free zone. But Islam does not seem to have an evangelistic, or missionary presence. If asked, will they proselytize? Do they have ‘reasons to believe’? Or do they not evangelize, because like early Calvinists, this is exclusively up to the will of Allah?
HeIsSailing on January 27, 2008 at 12:15 PM
Robert, Is there evidence that Allah was worshipped, prior to Muhammad’s arrival on the scene, by the quraysh as a moon god?
Allah is a generic term for “god” in Arabic, but so is Allat, who was apparently worshipped as a singular goddess by the quraysh - one of 3 daughters of Allah.
Did Mohammad, in essence, elevate the already existing pagan deity of “Allah” to the supreme, trancendent being worshipped by Christians and Jews?
Jimmy the Dhimmi on January 27, 2008 at 12:20 PM
First ever signs of any consideration I’ve seen provided by the Qur’an to the ahl-Dhimma, whereby they are held equal to Muslims.
Of course, all this ignores the fact that the ahl-Dhimma do not affirm that Allah is above His heavens, upon His Throne and that He is distinct from His creation. This of course is based on Allah being distinct from the Judeo-Christian deity.
infidelpride on January 27, 2008 at 12:22 PM
My understanding is that the literal translation of Allah is the God (al-lah). So “lah” is the generic term, while Allah is the more specific one. But I could be wrong about that.
flipflop on January 27, 2008 at 12:29 PM
Thank you Robert for your trenchant analysis and thank you Hot Air for blogging the Koran. No other political blog has the courage to do it.
I’m always struck with how anti thought the Koran and Islam is. It seems like the major goal of the religion, besides killing/enslaving everybody ELSE, is to not let its own followers think.
Mojave Mark on January 27, 2008 at 12:35 PM
Jimmy
There have been a lot of detailed discussions about whether the Muslim Allah is the same as that of the Judeo-Christians. Technically, it’s correct that Allah is also what Arabic speaking Christians worship, but given what the Qur’an says about the religious practices of Christians & Jews, it is factually incorrect to state that when Muslims refer to Allah, they are talking about a universal deity, as opposed to the one whose last prophet is Mohammed.
infidelpride on January 27, 2008 at 12:46 PM
I am racking my memory on two points
Isaac Asimov the great science fiction author wrote three very serious and scholarly books. Chronology of the World, Guide to Shakespeare, and a Guide to the Bible. I have lost the book, but I remember there was a section about the first hebrew characters of each line or segment of certain old testament text forming significant words or meanings. I never got to read the book before it went missing but an interesting point to compare
Secondly re
Recently I received emails or links to the problem in a muslim country that by law does not allow Christians to use the name Allah for God in their translation of the Bible on the principle that the Christian or Jewish God was falsely described and not the same as the true God, Allah, who owns that name exclusively. I will have to search and see if I can find this link from a Christian rights group, but it shows that not all muslims believe that they share the same God with the people of the Book. At the least, it shows some muslims believe that Christians and Jews do not posess the right to address God as Allah
entagor on January 27, 2008 at 1:21 PM
No. ‘Allah’ is similar to the Hebrew biblical ‘el’, ‘eloha’ and ‘elohim’. The entire word is a generalized term for a god figure.
Shy Guy on January 27, 2008 at 1:30 PM
Debate explores Muslim, Christian relationships
Connie on January 27, 2008 at 1:34 PM
saint kansas,
No, I hadn’t seen it before, and yes, it does sound ominous.
Robert Spencer on January 27, 2008 at 2:26 PM
HeIsSailing:
I never heard of Panin or Missler, but there certainly a lively “a form of numerology” that searches for “hidden meaning in the Quranic text” among Muslims.
There is a huge amount of speculative numerology centered on “Above it are nineteen,” (Qur’an 74:30).
Robert Spencer on January 27, 2008 at 2:31 PM
flipflop:
How do Islamic scholars square this with passages in the Quran that refer to contemporary events?
Allah foresees all!
Robert Spencer on January 27, 2008 at 2:33 PM
HeIsSailing:
Oh yes, they proselytize energetically in some places.
Robert Spencer on January 27, 2008 at 2:36 PM
Jimmy the Dhimmi:
I believe there is, but can’t put hand to evidence for it at the moment.
Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians used the word “Allah” for the supreme God before the advent of Islam.
Robert Spencer on January 27, 2008 at 2:39 PM
entagor:
This is going on in Malaysia:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/019558.php
Robert Spencer on January 27, 2008 at 2:41 PM
You raise an interesting question. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, Obama wins. How will Muslim countries and leaders deal with him since now they aren’t just dealing with non-believers, they are dealing with an apostate. What happens then? Some enterprising reporter should start asking…
TheBigOldDog on January 27, 2008 at 5:49 PM
“Allah….mounted the Throne.” Does it face away from mecca?
heh
A question for you, RS:
Verses 2-4 almost sound like a type of creation story (or at least a reference to Job 26:7), but Ibn Kathir’s explanation in this matter, using years to describe distance, dimension & direction, is puzzling. Can you clarify why he would use that terminology and how that disproves allah’s physicality?
Thanks again for taking the time to present a great study.
locomotivebreath1901 on January 27, 2008 at 11:27 PM
Robert, thank you for blogging the Qur’an here on HA for us. I had always been of the opinion that there was no “free will” for a Muslim because if he didn’t believe everything in the Qur’an he was subject to death by Allah’s followers here on earth. But then again I keep finding passages which seem to contradict themselves in the Qur’an.
Buzzy on January 28, 2008 at 12:50 AM
locomotivebreath1901:
I don’t think Ibn Kathir is trying to disprove Allah’s physicality. He seems to be taking that physicality for granted. As for using years to measure distance, he is talking about how long it would take to travel from one to the other.
Robert Spencer on January 28, 2008 at 5:15 AM
As for Obama, I wrote about the issue of his possibly being seen as an apostate from Islam about nine months ago in this article:
http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={C8772E0E-73B9-4DDE-BEF1-DE6A1CB4C273}
Robert Spencer on January 28, 2008 at 5:17 AM
Whoops. Let me try that again.
Article on Obama and Islam
Robert Spencer on January 28, 2008 at 5:18 AM
Hm, descriptions of distance in units of time. Mohammed must have spent some years in Los Angeles traffic or something. We use time to describe distance, too.
herself on January 28, 2008 at 5:24 AM
I’m not trying to interpret the Quran “for Muslims”, I’m trying to interpret it “for non-Muslims”, and see how the Quran mandates I be treated by Muslims. So far, it’s nothing but hatred toward me, regardless of how it outlines Muslim-Muslim relations.
To paraphrase the old saying “your right to freedom ends at the tip of my nose”, Muslims right to “be Muslim” ends at the edge of my skyscraper. Stick that in your hookah and smoke it, Tahir A. Qureshi.
venividivici on January 28, 2008 at 7:48 AM
herself:
Yes, and it takes about five hundred years to get across town here, too.
Robert Spencer on January 28, 2008 at 8:32 AM
It really amazes me how often this comes up and how fundemental a tennant Mohammed’s basic mis-interpretation of Christianity is to Islam. If they took the time to actually read a Gospel or two they’d see. Or they’d probably just call it another “corruption.”
crazy_legs on January 28, 2008 at 9:52 AM
Chesterton thought that, and I suppose there is some evidence, that all ‘pantheons’ were assembled out of each distinct groups ‘one god’. So we have many words that come from simply a word used for the one God. So in this sense evidence can be thrown back and forth on the subject. The problem that Christians and others have is not the idea that we kind of preknow God before anything (i.e. before the fall) but the character and notion of the God being described. The polytheistic system got around this by pluralistically including everyone’s gods - the trouble with that is that it makes God many (when he is one.) Islam’s approach is mostly to militaristically declare their conception correct and weed out all of those who disagree.
The approach of Christianity is and has always been not to narrowly define God (Historic deviations from this point nonwithstanding) but to say that you can not be talking about God if you deny certain things about him: The trinity, the incarnation, the resurrection, the existence of his Life, and so forth. It is common to misinterpret the creed to be defining God rather than pointing out what he isn’t. (The original creed included an anathema, which said, “And those who say that he is not God, or that there was a time that he was not, let them be Anathema…” Had such heresies not arisen no creed would have emerged.)
Islam is strictly cataphatic; leaving no room (unless you’re a Sufi) to experience the mystery of God.
It also seems to me that Islam exists within the historical framework of Christendom. No matter what it does it is caught in that framework; for instance ‘Shirk’, which is the cardinal sin, is a rebuttal to the Trinity. It would seem that instead really saying anything, it is mostly trying to ‘unsay’ a lot of what has been said.
RiverCocytus on January 28, 2008 at 10:52 AM
A question regarding omnipresence. If they deny Allah’s omnipresence, then how do they explain his ability to see all things (referenced in vv. 8-9)? Doesn’t this strongly suggest Allah’s ability to be “everywhere at one time”?
common sensineer on January 28, 2008 at 11:30 AM
common: I think that ‘transcendence’ implies being beyond time and space, which is distinct from being in all time and space. If Allah planned and created all he would know all by merit of having planned it, not by being in each and every thing.
RiverCocytus on January 28, 2008 at 12:03 PM
Sorry, this is just a tiny bit snarky. But REALLY? They proselytize??? Do they have swords in their hands when they do it?!
4shoes on January 28, 2008 at 8:48 PM
these words by Ataturk opened a WW1/Gallipoli campaign memorial. I think they are the kindest words, and I am pretty sure the only kind words ever spoken by a conquering Islamic to or about Christians.
Mike D. on January 29, 2008 at 1:50 AM
Robert, you may have already covered this over at jihad watch, but I would like your opinion on
“The Lost Koran Archive” recently written about.
Thank You
labrat on January 29, 2008 at 4:16 AM