A Brief Reflection on Egalitarianism and Deceptive Leveling Off through Reading the Surah The Prophets in the Quran

"People, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into races and tribes so that you should recognize one another. In God's eyes, the most honored of you are the ones most mindful of Him: God is all knowing, all aware.” (49:13)

This empty rhetoric of equality of everything with everything is the language of Satan to be equal to God or when God asked it to  bow down to Adam, it refrained, not because Satan respects democratic and egalitarian values but because it sees itself higher than all God’s creatures and wants to be even equal to God, so disobeys God.  We are fascinated with the egalitarian values and rebellion, but we confound human equality with leveling off virtue and vice, good and evil, the how, with whom, and for what cause of rebellion?  When I could disabuse myself from this empty pretension of reductive and atomistic equality between all beings and even with God, I wondered how and why was I entangled in this trap in the first place?  It is obvious now to me that I and anything else in the universe suffers from poverty of existence and only God and prayers to God can sustain and help us.

“Have they chosen any gods from the earth who can give life to the dead?  If there had been in the heavens or earth any gods but Him, both heavens and earth would be in ruins: God, Lord of the Throne, is far above the things they say: He cannot be called to account for anything He does, whereas they will be called to account.” (21:21-23)

Earth worship and the reification of gods and goddesses or animal forces and totems, admitting there are some wild forces in nature, none of them guide and save us.  None of them is the One who created us, the earth, and the whole universe.  Just think about it: since a few thousand years ago, before we understand that the earth is not flat but a sphere suspended in the universe, God sent us God’s prophets and messages to beware us that we shouldn’t worship the “nearest”—the earth and the moon, the sun and the sky, the humans or animals, or the universe.  Is this not strange?  If this inspiration was just human conjecture and an arbitrary belief system, how could we form such an idea?  Given our historical limitedness, we couldn’t imagine the limits of the earth and the sky and celestial bodies within it.  Our historical-natural inclination was to worship idols and what is the nearest, or our ancestors.  It is God’s constant message and reminder to transcend our perspective towards the Truth.  Our minds had to go through real transformations to let go of the most tangible and ponder the invisible God, the seemingly the farthest.  The reaction to this “unverifiable” God, asking for phenomenal evidence, is denial of God’s existence, or falling back to worshiping the nearest, shamanism and earth worship.  Nonetheless, longing for God, strikes the deepest note within our very soul through the consistent messages of scriptures--a phenomenal evidence.  However, we are inclined to reject hierarchies categorically and leveling off everything to atoms.  As always, our excess can't discern false and through hierarchies and the fact that methodologically reductionism has a limited explanatory power.  So, we want to become God or to bring God down to our level.  But God says:

“If there had been in the heavens or earth any gods but Him, both heavens and earth would be in ruins: God, Lord of the Throne, is far above the things they say: He cannot be called to account for anything He does, whereas they will be called to account.”   If there were other gods and goddesses instead of God, the heavens or earth would be in ruins, because 1) they don’t exist and even if they exist, they lack knowledge, power, and goodness to sustain the universe.  As well: 2) there is no proof or consistent scripture from these false gods.  The sort of things that are ascribed to those gods and goddesses are usually self-destructive and ends up to following one’s whims and desires:

“Have they chosen to worship other gods instead of Him? Say, ‘Bring your proof. This is the Scripture for those who are with me and the Scripture for those who went before me.’ But most of them do not recognize the truth, so they pay no heed. We never sent any messenger before you [Muhammad] without revealing to him: ‘There is no god but Me, so serve Me.’ And they say, ‘The Lord of Mercy has taken offspring for Himself.’ [The Meccan polytheists claimed the angels were God’s daughters.] May He be exalted! No! They are only His honored servants: they do not speak before He speaks and they act by His command. He knows what is before them and what is behind them, and they cannot intercede without His permission ––indeed they themselves stand in awe of Him. If any of them were to claim, ‘I am a god beside Him,’ We would reward them with Hell: this is how We reward evildoers.” (21:24-29)

We ought to reflect on the ontological difference between God and everything else that is created by God.  The verses above make it clear that to say “there is no god but God” means the created is fundamentally different from creator.  We have the problem of all or nothing thinking.  For example, we might say, “well, if it is fundamentally different, then we share nothing with God.”  How do we get to this conclusion?  If I paint a picture on a canvas, the picture is fundamentally different from me, but still it shares something with me, with my hand, thoughts, and aesthetic sense.  Imagine I make a robot.  A robot can never be equal to me or you, unless it is a biological cloning, as it won’t have a world and soul like me, and hence it won’t have the capacity— and it is dangerous to give it power— to rule the world.  However, the robot and all my creations, including this very written text, share something with me and my world.  If the created (jinns, angels, or humans, or other forces) declare equality with the creator and share godliness with God, then the ontological difference between God and what is created by God will be obliterated and that which has no knowledge or goodness as God, will ruin the heavens and earth.  This fundamental difference indicates nothing has organic relation to God, i.e., God begot no one nor was God begotten.  Again, it is like our artifacts and robots want to share power with us.  Not that anything is wrong with “sharing”—these egalitarian terms are deceptive and conceal rather than reveal—the fact is that robots and our artifacts, even animals, don’t have the discretion to preserve life on this planet.  The analogy between God and human beings is however fallacious through and through, because one might argue human beings are also potentially capable of destroying life on this planet as the present age of Anthropocene shows it.  So, it seems animals are somehow sometimes better than humans.  But this again disregards the fact that humans also carry the spirit of God and are God’s viceregent on this planet and they are also the ones who with God’s mercy and grace will overcome the destructive greed of the powerful and at the end the earth belongs to the faithful and those who care and do good.

One of the barriers that hindered me from connecting to the Quran was this fictitious egalitarian and seemingly democratic sentiment; it looks like we want everything to be equal to everything.  To the extent that it is equality between human beings, regardless of race, gender, class, but in their taqwa (God-consciousness), the Quran clearly states:

"People, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into races and tribes so that you should recognize one another. In God's eyes, the most honored of you are the ones most mindful of Him: God is all knowing, all aware.” (49:13)

Animals also are to be revered and respected in the Quran:

“All the creatures that crawl on the earth and those that fly with their wings are communities like yourselves. We have missed nothing out of the Record— in the end they will be gathered to their Lord.” (6:38)

This is a reason in killing animals, the divine ritual is to bring the name of God.  But are animals equal to us?  Can they take care of your business and the world?  This “egalitarian” veneer in the age of Anthropocene cruelty and animal factories just hides another fact: everything is equal means I want “I” or “my tribe or group” to be in power.

This empty rhetoric of equality of everything with everything is the language of Satan to be equal to God or when God asked it to  bow down to Adam, it refrained, not because Satan respects democratic and egalitarian values but because it sees itself higher than all God’s creatures and wants to be even equal to God, so disobeys God.  We are fascinated with the egalitarian values and rebellion, but we confound human equality with leveling off virtue and vice, good and evil, the how, with whom, and for what cause of rebellion? When I could disabuse myself from this empty pretension of reductive and atomistic equality between all beings and even with God, I wondered how and why I was entangled in this trap in the first place?  It is obvious now to me that I and anything else in the universe suffers from poverty of existence and only God and prayers to God can sustain and help us.

For this very reason, in the next verses in the surah The Prophets, God reminds us of the creation of the universe and all living beings from water—to the surprise of evolutionary theorists:

“Are the disbelievers not aware that the heavens and the earth used to be joined together and that We ripped them apart, that We made every living thing from water? Will they not believe?  And We put firm mountains on the earth, lest it should sway under them, and set broad paths on it, so that they might follow the right direction, and We made the sky a well-secured canopy– yet from its wonders they turn away.  It is He who created night and day, the sun and the moon, each floating in its orbit.  We have not granted everlasting life to any other human being before you either [Muhammad]– if you die, will [the disbelievers] live forever?  Every soul is certain to taste death: We test you all through the bad and the good, and to Us you will all return. When the disbelievers see you, they laugh at you: ‘Is this the one who talks about your gods?’ They reject any talk of the Lord of Mercy.” (21:30-36)