"Be not like she who unravels her yarn, breaking it after it had been strong [by] taking your oaths to practice deception among yourselves, so that one community might be larger and wealthier than another."
Quran 16:92
This is drawn from the 16th surah, usually rendered as "The Bee." Truthfully, I don't think I have anything profound to add by way of commentary (which, I guess, makes it a typical blog post for me). In the margin next to it I had written, not surprisingly, "Penelope." For those of us who remember the Odyssey this is an obvious association. As Nasr tells us, "Weaving strands of yarn together to form a strong thread, only to senselessly unravel it, was reportedly the practice of a mentally impaired woman in Makkah who did this on a regular habit. In this verse, it is used as a metaphor for those who take oaths to form strong bonds of alliance, only to break those oaths and undo those bonds when they seem to have lost their political expediency or in order to forge an alliance with a larger and more powerful group." In this case it speaks to the strongly communal nature of not only Muhammad's early followers, but of Islam itself.
Quran 16:92
This is drawn from the 16th surah, usually rendered as "The Bee." Truthfully, I don't think I have anything profound to add by way of commentary (which, I guess, makes it a typical blog post for me). In the margin next to it I had written, not surprisingly, "Penelope." For those of us who remember the Odyssey this is an obvious association. As Nasr tells us, "Weaving strands of yarn together to form a strong thread, only to senselessly unravel it, was reportedly the practice of a mentally impaired woman in Makkah who did this on a regular habit. In this verse, it is used as a metaphor for those who take oaths to form strong bonds of alliance, only to break those oaths and undo those bonds when they seem to have lost their political expediency or in order to forge an alliance with a larger and more powerful group." In this case it speaks to the strongly communal nature of not only Muhammad's early followers, but of Islam itself.
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