"May the hands of Abu Lahab perish, and may he perish! His wealth avails him not, nor what he has earned. He shall enter a blazing Fire. And his wife, carrier of firewood, upon her neck is a rope of palm fiber."
Quran 111:1-5
Here is the entirety of surah 111, al-Masad, here rendered as "The Palm Fiber." It's one of the shortest surahs, as we would expect from a chapter so near the end of the 114 surahs that make up the Quran. It's a very straight-forward surah, but also one that is at times difficult to process. By way of context Nasr, in the related commentary from the Study Quran, tells us, "Abu Lahab was the wealthiest of the Prophet's uncles and one of the Qurayshi leaders who most opposed the Prophet and persecuted his followers." (p. 1576) This is interesting on several levels, being that calls out an individual, and one living at that moment, for an attack. It's not that societies and individuals (even if they are only identified by position, as in, the Pharaoh) aren't called out in the Quran, but they are usually dredged up out of the past and used as exemplars of bad behavior who deserved punishment. Abu Lahab was living during the time of the revelation. So, did God specifically identify Abu Lahab in this revelation? Or, does this give us an insight into the process of how revelations work. That is, God sent a message through Gabriel to Muhammad, but that message was more of a concept, which Muhammad "translated" into a specific revelations. So, God identified a type of behavior that was worthy of condemnation, but it was Muhammad who "identified" the specific person, in this case his uncle who was terrorizing him. It's an interesting way to think about it, but also that is, obviously, fraught with pitfalls. One of the biggest pitfalls is the sense of anger, even justifiable anger, that it might express on the part of Muhammad, a person that we don't normally associate with anger.
Quran 111:1-5
Here is the entirety of surah 111, al-Masad, here rendered as "The Palm Fiber." It's one of the shortest surahs, as we would expect from a chapter so near the end of the 114 surahs that make up the Quran. It's a very straight-forward surah, but also one that is at times difficult to process. By way of context Nasr, in the related commentary from the Study Quran, tells us, "Abu Lahab was the wealthiest of the Prophet's uncles and one of the Qurayshi leaders who most opposed the Prophet and persecuted his followers." (p. 1576) This is interesting on several levels, being that calls out an individual, and one living at that moment, for an attack. It's not that societies and individuals (even if they are only identified by position, as in, the Pharaoh) aren't called out in the Quran, but they are usually dredged up out of the past and used as exemplars of bad behavior who deserved punishment. Abu Lahab was living during the time of the revelation. So, did God specifically identify Abu Lahab in this revelation? Or, does this give us an insight into the process of how revelations work. That is, God sent a message through Gabriel to Muhammad, but that message was more of a concept, which Muhammad "translated" into a specific revelations. So, God identified a type of behavior that was worthy of condemnation, but it was Muhammad who "identified" the specific person, in this case his uncle who was terrorizing him. It's an interesting way to think about it, but also that is, obviously, fraught with pitfalls. One of the biggest pitfalls is the sense of anger, even justifiable anger, that it might express on the part of Muhammad, a person that we don't normally associate with anger.
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