Reflection on the Surah Hud in the Quran-Part I

In retrospection or in looking back at my life, I realize I haven’t done that much good and have done some wrong which have left their scars upon my body and soul.  I know one thing: I will walk towards You until I die, because I understand now what You mean when You say in this very surah (Hud) that I am going to write about, and in so many others, that “good things drive bad away”.  I am astounded by reflecting on this surah and others and hope to show how the surah is instructive, coherent, and consistent beyond the perception of an illiterate human being called Mohammad 1400 years ago.

This is a two parts reflection on the surah Hud (11) in the Quran.  In the first reflection, I will discuss the structure of the surah and its coherency and consistency up to the stories of prophets before Mohammad. In the second reflection, I will analyze the stories of prophets before Mohammad narrated in surah Hud and how they are interrelated to the major premises of the Quran: Believing in God (and its spiritual effect on the character, heart, body, and soul in the short and long run) and ethics (or the effects of actions on the self and others) are intertwined.  The structure of the surah Hud and stories of prophets in the Quran have multidimensional goals: first, to reassure the prophet Mohammad and then instruct him and the audience/reader, and third through a demonstration of the wisdom of God, through this very coherency, consistency of a guiding narration in the Quran, to bring us back to God and reconnect us to our Source.

The structure of surah Hud (11):

1)     First, a recapitulation of the whole surah and indeed the whole Quran:

“In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy

1 Alif Lam Ra [mystery letters at the beginning of some surahs]

[This is] a Scripture whose verses are perfected, then set out clearly, from One who is all wise, all aware.  [Say, Prophet], ‘Worship no one but God. I am sent to you from Him to warn and to give good news.  Ask your Lord for forgiveness, then turn back to Him. He will grant you wholesome enjoyment until an appointed time, and give His grace to everyone who has merit. But if you turn away, I fear you will have torment on a terrible Day: it is to God that you will all return, and He has power over everything.’” (11:1-4)

2)     Then, the surah continues with an invitation to bring faith in God and a description of God’s power, either in relation to us: “He knows well the innermost secrets of the heart.  There is not a creature that moves on earth whose provision is not His concern. He knows where it lives and its [final] resting place: it is all [there] in a clear record.” (11:5-7)

Or, as the creator of the universe: “It is He who created the heavens and the earth in six Days [“a Day with your Lord is like a thousand years by your reckoning” (22:47)] ––His rule extends over the water [“We made every living thing from water?” (21:30)] too– so as to test which of you does best.” (11:6)

3)     In the third step, the surah speaks about the Day of Resurrection: “Yet [Prophet], if you say to them, ‘You will be resurrected after death,’ the disbelievers are sure to answer, ‘This is clearly nothing but sorcery.’ If We defer their punishment for a determined time, they are sure to say, ‘What is holding it back?’ But on the Day it comes upon them, nothing will divert it from them; what they mocked will be all around them.” (11:7-8).  So, when prophets warn their people of resurrection, they deny it, but when it occurs, they will be remorseful.  God relates it to the general state of human beings: “How desperate and ungrateful man becomes when We let him taste Our mercy and then withhold it! And if We let him taste mercy after some harm has touched him, he is sure to say, ‘Misfortune has gone away from me.’ He becomes exultant and boastful.  Not so those who are steadfast and do good deeds: they will have forgiveness and a great reward.” (11:9-11)

4)     Up to this point, we had the opening verses about the truth of the Quran and God’s power over everything, whether in our own selves and hearts, or upon the worlds, earth, and water.  Then, we have this complex argument:

4-1   “So [Prophet] are you going to [literally “perhaps you will”] abandon some part of what is revealed to you, and let your heart be oppressed by it, because they say, ‘Why is no treasure sent down to him? Why has no angel come with him?’  You are only there to warn; it is God who is in charge of everything.” (11:12)

“And let your heart (or here “sadrak”= breast) be oppressed by it”… This says a lot to me: They tell the prophet that “who are you?  Where are the miracles and angels?”  And then the cycle starts within: The prophet will abandon part of the message sent to him by God and then let his heart be oppressed by it.  This internal mechanism, what we call conscience or truth, is given to us by God and is the very internal clock that registers everything we do, not only in our souls but in our very body, and our own inconsistent actions and duplicity create wedges inside our consciousness and fracture our soul and body into pieces.  Each piece is an oppression of the heart by my deviation from the truth that I already knew and the deeds that ensue from them, registered in each part and cell of my body.  I could use “reason” to hear the voice (of conscience) and stop oppressing my heart or to use “reason” for excuses and justifications to deviate and consequently oppress my heart.  Reason is not separate from heart[1]. 

   

4-2  “If they say, ‘He has invented it himself,’ say, ‘Then produce ten invented surahs like it, and call in whoever you can beside God, if you are truthful.’  If they do not answer you, then you will all know that it is sent down containing knowledge from God, and that there is no god but Him. Then will you submit to Him?”

To reassure the prophet and our hearts (the reader or hearer), God tells the prophet no one can invent anything like these surahs.  But why?  Regardless of the literary merits of the Quran about which books have written, something else resonates with this quest for me.  It is the matter of “heart”.  My heart knows that I can’t speak about the truth in the way that the Quran does.  I know that I don’t have the authority.  I have authority to express my opinion, but I know it is my opinion and not a God sent truth.  I may try to fake its tone of certainty but my heart betrays itself at the end in my final composition, in its sense and seam of coherency and consistency, in its tone, and more importantly, in its content.    

4-3  “If any desire [only] the life of this world with all its finery, We shall repay them in full in this life for their deeds– they will be given no less–but such people will have nothing in the Hereafter but the Fire: their work here will be fruitless and their deeds futile.”

Some may object that some atheists such as Chomsky are ethical through and through and do they deserve to have Fire in the hereafter?  I don’t know the answer about people like Chomsky, because Chomsky in many senses implemented the divine Golden Rule better and deeper than so many religious people, but I know one point that I elaborated in my Reflections on Chomskyean Nihilism[2].  Chomsky believes in psychic continuity [3], an interesting view among Western philosophies about internal mental coherency of identities.  He problematizes matter or the physical [4] and believes in the possibility of higher intelligents who can easily see our pitfalls and limitations [5].  However, none of these help Chomsky admit that life has a meaning!  Basically, he separates value judgements from the “meaning” of life, which means one can assign a value-judgement as the meaning of life or not, it depends on the individual.  He believes the autonomous subject should render meaning to one’s life, which Chomsky chose to be love, care, altruism, and a life of service to the poor.  But this value-driven life is embedded in our biology; it doesn’t give a universal meaning to life.  Chomsky’s philosophy is spiritually empty and harmful, and in grounding values in “biology”, he commits a naturalistic fallacy about ethics, in which, as Hume put it [6], he does not distinguish between “how things are” (facts) and “how things ought to be” (ethics).  I will discuss more below that how his views, similar to Marx who already misled so many, despite Chomsky’s best intentions, might mislead so many more into humanistic hedonism.  I hope he will be saved as one of the people of the Height in surah 7.

4-4          “Can they be compared to those who have clear proof from their Lord, recited by a witness [angel Gabriel] from Him, and before it the Book of Moses, as a guide and mercy? These people believe in it, whereas those groups that deny its truth are promised the Fire.” (11:17)

God clearly addresses all those, like Chomsky and Russell, who believe there isn't sufficient evidence for the existence of God.  One can listen and critically evaluate the scriptures and especially the Quran.  Is it possible that an illiterate man, the prophet Mohammad, could make all these sound arguments out of whim or sickness?  How could we justify it?  I myself didn’t believe in the Quran without really reading it through.  The idea of “punishment”, discussed repeatedly in the Quran, felt repulsive to me.  But I never took the pain to understand what this “punishment” is about, as much as I understand now.  If one comes by a preconceived disbelief gets nothing but disbelief.

4-5   And this complex argument with diverse premises comes to its clear conclusion:  “So, have no doubt about it [Prophet]: it is the Truth from your Lord, though most people do not believe so.” (11:17)

5)     After this affirmation of the Truth from God and reassuring the prophet on his mission, with the following interval, the surah moves to show how the faith in God or lack thereof among people of Noah, Hud, Salih, Abraham, Lot, Shu’ayb, and Moses was intertwined with their ethical path:

“Who could do more wrong than someone who invents lies about God? Such people will be brought before their Lord, and the witnesses will say, ‘These are the ones that lied about their Lord.’ God’s rejection is the due of those who do such wrong, who hinder others from God’s path, trying to make it crooked, and deny the life to come.  They will not escape on earth, and there will be no one other than God to protect them. Their punishment will be doubled. They could not hear, and they did not see.  It is they who will have lost their souls, and what they invented will have deserted them.  There is no doubt they will be the ones to lose most in the life to come.  But those who believed, did good deeds, and humbled themselves before their Lord will be companions in Paradise and there they will stay.  These two groups are like the blind and the deaf as compared with those who can see and hear well: can they be alike? How can you not take heed?”  (11:18-24)

What is the effect of reading this interval?  God’s rejection of those “inventing lie about God” is a reassurance to the prophet and to the audience/reader that the Quran is not the prophet’s invention.  The hallmark is to show that those who reject God will be rejected.  Why?  Because “they could not hear, and they did not see”.  This not “hearing” and “seeing” is a state of heart (ghalb).  It is not only an empty belief or disbelief, an empty expression of words which leaves no effect on heart, body, and soul, but it fruits in deeds that corrupts the soul.  Now, the common objection would be: what about those who don’t believe but do good, such as Buddhists and Chomsky?  It is subtle and we should consider that there is a huge difference between Buddha and Chomsky.  Buddha calls for salvation and liberation through 8-fold path.  Buddhism is a religion not a secular humanistic theory.  Buddha doesn’t reject God.  He simply refrains from speaking about God as well as Nirvana.  His task is to show the ethics of overcoming the self (nafs) to arrive at our Buddha nature (or divine nature).  Chomsky has faith in science but he rejects “secularism” as a religion.   He tries to show that science doesn’t reject the possibility of higher intelligence.  However, as I mentioned, similar to Marx, if Chomsky’s discourse deviates so many people from the path of God, into atrocities of Gulags or "Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps", then he also will be rejected.  The principles are these: Those who mislead people in the name of God (inventing lie about God, trying to make it crooked), and those who hinder others from God’s path, and deny the life to come, will be rejected by God.  Why?  My hypothesis is this: there is a tight connection between “belief or faith” and “deeds or ethics”.  The ethics of Chomsky, where he rejects that life has any meaning but what the individual chooses, in the long run reduces spirituality to innate biological systems for survival and might end up to the corruption of the ethical into hedonism, as there is no life beyond this world, taking pleasure in this world becomes the only meaningful ground, now for our innate moral biological compass.  Chomsky admits that we have the freedom of the will to deviate from this inner moral setting.  Why should I not deviate, one may ask, if I can?  Chomsky has no answer but some ungrounded value judgments about the primacy of altruism, kindness, and love to egoism.  Again, I hope Chomsky will be of the people of the Height in surah 7 and I assume it all depends on the ethical-behavioral ramifications of their beliefs and deeds.

In the next reflection, I will continue surah Hud (11) and how the Quran ties the ethical behavior with belief in God by narrating the story of Noah, Hud, Salih, Abraham, Lot, Shu’ayb, and Moses, and comes back to the Quran and Mohammad and ends with these verses, if we just keep on reflecting on what they mean:

“[Prophet], keep up the prayer at both ends of the day, and during parts of the night, for good things drive bad away– this is a reminder for those who are aware.  Be steadfast: God does not let the rewards of those who do good go to waste.  If only there had been, among the generations before your time, people with a remnant of good sense, to forbid corruption on the earth! We saved only a few of them, while the unjust pursued the enjoyment of plenty, and persisted in sin.  Your Lord would not destroy any town without cause if its people were acting righteously. 

If your Lord had pleased, He would have made all people a single community, but they continue to have their differences– except those on whom your Lord has mercy– for He created them to be this way, and the word of your Lord is final: ‘I shall definitely fill Hell with both jinn and men.’"

"So [Muhammad], We have told you the stories of the prophets to make your heart firm and in these accounts truth has come to you, as well as lessons and reminders for the believers.  Say to those who do not believe, ‘Do whatever you can: we too are doing what we can,’ and ‘Wait: we too are waiting.’  All that is hidden in the heavens and earth belongs to God, and all authority [or all things] goes back to Him. So [Prophet], worship Him, and put your trust in Him: your Lord is never unaware of what you [people] are doing.” (11:114-123)
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[1] "Heart" in the Quran:  https://www.al-islam.org/self-building-ayatullah-ibrahim-amini/heart-quran

[2] My "Reflections on Chomskyan Nihilism": http://philosophyweeklyreflections.blogspot.com/2016/10/reflections-on-chomskyan-nihilism-ilove.html

[3] Psychic Continuity:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ozZdrFQfTU
Induction and Psychic Continuity:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbXG9rTZKNA

[4] Physical:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsLOVYTLt90
Materialism, Limited Understanding, and Innage Moral Principles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ARDKad9KwU

[5] Science, Minds, and the Limits of Understanding: https://chomsky.info/201401__/

[6] Hume: The Is/Ought Gap:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT7yXG2aJdY&t=4s