What It Means - Day 257

"Whether you display a good deed openly or conceal it, or pardon an evil, truly God is Pardoning, Powerful."
Quran 4:149

And here's another brief passage from the fourth surah, al-Nisa, rendered as "Women." I don't know if I have anything profound to add to it, and, truthfully, how can one add anything more profound to notion of doing a good deed. I chose this one because of how it, essentially, equates, or nearly equates, performing a good deed and pardoning a bad deed done against you. I've never been a person who held grudges, and I think that was true long before I ever converted.  I'm not certain why, because I certainly come from a family of grudge-holders, or maybe it's because I came from a family of grudge-holders. There are people who have harmed me in my life, both personally and professionally, but I can't seem to muster the energy to hate them. Sadly, I've hurt people, some of them remarkably good and kind people, albeit it unintentionally, and I feel the weight of my actions, much like Jacob Marley's chain. I'd prefer that others didn't carry those weight around for wrongs they did to me, either intentionally or unintentionally.

What It Means - Day 256

"O yo who believe! Be steadfast maintainers of justice, witnesses for God, though it be against yourselves, or your parents and kinfolk, and whether it be someone rich or poor, for God is nearer unto both. So follow not your caprice, that you may act justly. If you distort or turn away, truly God is Aware of whatever you do."
Quran 4:135

And here's another passage from the same surah (like I said, it's an important one), al-Nisa, "Women," which is the fourth surah. Justice is essential to Islam and it is expected/required of Muslims. Nasr tells us, "Establishing and upholding justice in society is a key concern of the Quran. God establishes justice by setting the Balance within creation itself (15:19; 55:7; 57:25), by commanding justice among human beings through revelation (7:29; 16:90; 42:17; 57:25), and by weighing deeds in a set balance on the Day of Judgment (21:47).

So, you have to act justly, no matter how rich and powerful or poor and powerless the other person is, and that justice should begin with yourself (we all too often leave ourselves out of this equation). I had a big blowup with the previous Imam and several members of our community felt that I had tweeted (for a while I was in charge of the mosque's twitter feed) on some inappropriate topics. I had retweeted a couple tweets dealing with the rights and conditions of LGBT Muslims within our broader ummah. Several members asked/told me to take down the tweets and I refused, and, not surprisingly, my infamous temper made an appearance (which I do feel bad about, and for which I apologized). However, I did not apologize for the tweets and I did not take them down. If we are about justice then we are about justice for every member of our community.

What It Means - Day 255

"And when you are offered a greeting, respond with a greeting that is better, or return it; such God takes account of all things."
Quran 4:86

Here's another passage from al-Nisa, or "Women," the fourth surah. As Nasr tells us in the Study Quran: "When one is offered a greeting (tahiyyah), which is usually understood to be the proper Islamic greeting, 'Peace be upon you (al-salamu alaykum),' one should respond with a greeting that is better such as, 'And upon you be peace, and the Mercy of God, and His Blessing,' or simply return it, that is, respond in a similar manner by saying, 'And upon you be peace (wa-alaykum al-salaum); or simply, 'And upon you.'" (p. 230) as Muslims we are directed to always return the worse with the better, that is to avoid an eye for an eye approach (as we've discussed previously). This passage is a simpler, everyday version of the same basic Islamic approach, in this case responding with a "better" greeting.

What It Means - Day 254

"If you fear that you will not deal fairly with the orphans, then marry such women as seem good to you, two, three, or four; but if you fear that you will not deal justly, then only one, or those whom your right hands possess. Thus it is more like you will not commit injustice."
Quran 4:3

This passage, drawn from the fourth surah, al-Nisa, or "Women," one of the most important chapters in the Quran. This is the Quranic passage that limits the number of wives to no more than four, but actually no more than you treat fairly. The common perception is that it was increased to four, but actually it was limited to four. Arabia at the time of Muhammad was both an extraordinarily misogynistic society, but also a region torn by consistent warfare; the result being many widows with no one to support them. The Prophet himself was only married to one woman, his first wife Khadija, for most of his life, and it was only after her death - and because of the political demands of sewing together a deeply fragmented land, that he ended up marrying many women for essentially diplomatic reasons. Thus the decision to allow four had much more to do with social and economic reasons than anything else, but it has stuck. In reality I think that less than 2% of Muslim marriages are actually polygamous, mainly because of the directive about treating all the wives fairly - and obviously because of national rules making it illegal. This is another one of those rules that I find myself in opposition to, not only because, contrary to the original desire to provide some measure of protection, it all too often limits the rights of women. In addition, this is one of those religious dictates that, well, has nothing to do with religion, but instead the societal and historical baggage associated with the religion's growth.

What It Means - Day 253

"O yo who believe! Be patient, vie in patience, persevere, and reverence God, that haply you may prosper."
Quran 3:200

These words form the final passage of the third surah, Al Imran, usually rendered as "The House of Imran." Truthfully, I don't know what I could possibly add to these simple but beautifully profound words. I've proposed before that one of the things that drew me to Islam in the first place was its emphasis on patience (it's never been one of my strong points, or at least I've never considered it as one of my strong points). I can remember how when I was a kid my mom would drag us up to Cincinnati to shop at Shillito's, somehow maneuvering her big car into the parking garage, and maneuvering four kids around the store. Actually, I think I mainly managed to stay out of trouble by not being "there," instead off traipsing through some far off imagined land fueled by my reading. Maybe that's the key to patience, being of this world and not of this world. Is this how one maintains patience in our increasingly chaotic, hectic world, by living only partially in it, and simultaneously living in God's world (as much as we are ever able to do so).

What It Means - Day 252

"To God belongs the East and the West. Wheresoever you turn, there is the Face of God. God is All-Encompassing, Knowing."

Quran 2:115

We've discussed similar verses previously. This particular one is drawn from al-Baqarah, the second surah, the longest in the Quran, here rendered as "The Cow." On one level is relates to the direction of the qiblah, especially in regards to the change during the Prophet's life from facing toward Jerusalem and instead turning towards Mecca. However, it's also obviously more profound than that. As Nasr tells us, "This verse can also be taken as an allusion to the Omnipresence of God, who is the First, and the Last, and the Outward, and the Inward (57:3), manifest in all things, though naught is like unto Him (42:11). This verse is understood to mean that God is present everywhere and and is one of the scriptural foundations for the Sufi doctrine of the 'oneness of being,' or wahdat al-wujud." (Study Quran, p. 54) To me, it also brings up the folly of the notion that we as Muslims, or any religion at any time, would ever think that we have a monopoly on God and the one clear, true vision of the divine.

What It Means - Day 251

"Naskh ('abrogation') as a technical term is a key concept in the fully developed form of Islamic jurisprudence, theology, and Quranic commentary, and is a major conceptual tool for understanding the relationship between different commands and prohibitions in the Quran and the Sunnayh. It is a crucial concept for understanding how the Quran is actually used as a source of Islamic Law and practice, and thus many commentators devote considerable attention to this particular verse." (Nasr, Study Quran, p. 49)

The verse in  question is: "No sign do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but that We bring that which is better than it or like unto it. Dost thou not know that God is powerful over all things?" This is the 106th verse of the second surah, al-Baqarah, here rendered as "The Cow."


We've discussed the concept of abrogations before, the notion that a later - chronological, not in the regular order of the Quran - revelation abrogated, either replacing or modifying an earlier revelation. It's certainly a fascinating concept, although also a maddening one. Scholars have argued, and continue to argue, about the number of Quranic verses that have been abrogated, with the estimates ranging from less than ten to hundreds. If God is omniscient and eternal, essentially existing across all time and space at every second, then why would would there be the need to replace or modify an earlier revelation. Certainly the argument could not be made that God made a mistake the first time around. The argument made in regards to alcohol, as we've discussed, is that humans weren't ready for a total ban initially, so God had to get there slowly and only reveal the total ban when people were ready. This also make me think that most of the abrogations were either harsh or at least more restrictive (but more on that later). If the point is that later revelations had to be made because humans didn't really understand the first revelations, then who is to say that they understand the newer ones?

Nasr continues:

"Although it is generally agreed that one Quranic ruling may abrogate another Quranic ruling revealed earlier in time, there has been considerable difference of opinion about other kinds of naskh, for example, whether Prophetic practice (Sunnah) can abrogate the Quran or vice versa, and whether the consensus  of the learned community (ijma) can abrogate a ruling from the Quran or a hadith."

Obviously, this is a very confusing and sometimes contentious issue. Honestly, I'm puzzled by the argument that a consensus of the learned community could abrogate something from the Quran, mainly because is the argument not based on the notion that the opinion of a group of humans, albeit scholarly ones, would replace a revelation. And, to me, this brings us to my biggest problem with abrogations: they are, I would argue, by definition more about human interpretation and bias and less about divine revelation, which probably explains why the abrogations seem to always grow more harsh and/or more restrictive. Again, I think it's easy to cherry pick passages from the Quran to back up your own personal beliefs, and abrogations seem to have such potential to take us further and further away from the heart of the faith. This is why I always say that you need to look at your faith as a whole and not focus on little, sometimes debated, corners of it.

And, as always, I'll throw in my usual disclaimer that I speak for me and me alone, and I do not represent the vast majority of Muslims (I don't know why they're all so routinely wrong . . . 😌).