Qu'ran Reading 9:69

Like those before you; they were stronger than you in power and more abundant in wealth and children, so they enjoyed their portion; thus have you enjoyed your portion as those before you enjoyed their portion; and you entered into vain discourses like the vain discourses in which entered those before you. These are they whose works are null in this world and the hereafter; and these are they who are the losers.

Qu'ran Reading 8:69

Eat then of the lawful and good (things) which you have acquired in war, and be careful of (your duty to) Allah; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

Reading from the Qur'an regarding afterlife

Surah 7:46-51

46 And between the two there shall be a veil, and on the most elevated places there shall be men who know all by their marks, and they shall call out to the dwellers of the garden: Peace be on you; they shall not have yet entered it, though they hope.

47 And when their eyes shall be turned toward the inmates of the fire, they shall say: Our Lord! place us not with the unjust people.

48 And the dwellers of the most elevated places shall call out to men whom they will recognize by their marks saying: Of no avail were to you your amassings and your behaving haughtily:

49 Are these they about whom you swore that Allah will not bestow mercy on them? Enter the garden; you shall have no fear, nor shall you grieve.

50 And the inmates of the fire shall call out to the dwellers of the garden, saying: Pour on us some water or of that which Allah has given you. They shall say: Surely Allah has prohibited them both to the unbelievers.

51 Who take their religion for an idle sport and a play and this life's world deceives them; so today We forsake them, as they neglected the meeting of this day of theirs and as they denied Our Communications.

[By the way, notice that 7:50 is exactly as Jesus describes those in hell calling for water from those in heaven, in Luke 16:19-31].

[I put 7:51 in bold letting so you will notice that those who are "religious" but treat it as a game or a scripted play will find themselves in hell; it is by far not only the unbelievers in religion who go there, but those who are irreverent and who make a game of faith.]

How to approach the "right religion" question

I was listening to a certain talk show where he was rerunning a segment where callers described their experience at converting from their original religion, to a different faith, and then back to their original faith, or yet another conversion. Like my blog post earlier today about whether God is strong enough to defeat evil, I detected an urgent underlying assumption about not only this question of finding the "right religion," but also the hidden error in even looking for the "right religion." That may sound strange but here we go with my explanation, because this is also a problem of what sounds logical is actually disguising huge potential errors and very wrong paths to finding God.

Here is an analogy to understand the problem, and huge pitfall, of having a "seeking the right religion" orientation. Suppose that you are an infant during World War II and due to the Holocaust you have been separated from your father. You grow up without having memories of him and all that you know is his name; you have no idea what has become of him. The years go by and you grow up, perhaps with the family who sheltered you, and they may even have adopted you. You still do not know what had happened to your father, if he died, or if he lived, where he is now. You become educated and grown up, and now have enough income, maturity and will power to seek your father.

Now that you have imagined this situation, and put yourself in this person's shoes, let me ask you a question. Are you seeking your father to 1) find out who he is and where he is because he is your father, or 2) because you hope that he has some money stashed away that if you present yourself to him, you can have it?

Wow, doesn't reason number two sound crass and totally wrong? Obviously the child, now a young man or woman, wants to find his or her real father, for love, for kinship, for a real relationship or, if he has indeed died, closure and honoring of his memory. So clearly reason number one is why the child now grown seeks his or her father, torn from him or her in war and in the horror of the Holocaust.

Without being mean, and I really am not being mean at ALL, let us look at the consequences of reason number one or reason number two. The person who seeks for reason number one is overcome with joy when he or she finds out what has happened to his or her father, even if the news is not good, for at last he or she knows the truth.

The person who seeks for reason number two is also happy when he or she finds who he or she THINKS is his or her father, especially if he or she is now endowed with possessions or money given to him or her by the living father, or inherited by him or her if the father is deceased. He or she is glad that he or she found the right dad.

What might go wrong with reason number two? What if the father has no treasure, no assets, to share at all with the seeking son or daughter. Is the joy in the reunion, or the closure, diminished? Obviously yes, if that was the driving motivation. A second problem is being certain that this is the actual father and not mistaken identity. Might the presumed son or daughter be tempted to believe that the prospective actual father who has assets is indeed the father, even if further research shows mistaken identity? And might the actual prospective father be dismissed as not being the actual father if the prospective son or daughter is looking through a certain set of expectations, thinking their actual father MUST surely have money to share?

=== When the objective of the search for the "right one" is established upon receipt of reward, rather than determining the truth, great error is likely to be introduced.

This is the problem with those who seek the "right religion" rather than those who seek "the truth." People seek the "right religion" for reasons that sound valid, but if you take a closer look, you find they have great potential for error:

o They want the "right religion" so that they have the best outcome (presumed rewards for faithfulness in both life and after death). If you are a Christian that might mean you want the "right religion" to be "saved;" if you believe in reincarnation you want the "right religion" in order to try to manipulate a "better rebirth" in a "future life;" and if you are a New Age pagan or whatever you might be hoping to find the "right religion" so you can be combating the "correct alien menace." :-(

o They want the "right religion" because it is the one that "feels right" and "comfortable," and is "harmonious with their lifestyle."

o They want the "right religion" because it is the one that "answers their questions" and "gives them gifts, charisms, special powers and abilities, and knowledge that 'others are not privy to."

You can now see that those reasons all sound logical, but are huge temptations to accept as being the "right religion" whichever "faith" scratches the itch and presumably grants the reward you seek. Thus the Holocaust surviving son or daughter might genuinely think the guy with the most money really is their father and dismiss poorer guys ("he doesn't look like me anyway") and not bother with a paternity test.

===When one seeks the truth rather than the "right religion," one never finds the "wrong religion" because the truth is a built-in paternity test.

Suddenly, when one seeks the truth first, one becomes much more analytical and logical, even in a spiritual quest. You recognize that the correct father might not make you feel "comfortable" like you are hanging out with a pal. You recognize that the correct father may not have been salting away lots of money just to give to you as a reward for "finding him." When you seek the truth, you seek the truth, and you will find the truth.

I'll let you contemplate this, for you can fill in the blanks of what I would write here, of the different ways that the "right religion" can "feel right" or "sound right," but if you have an agenda other than the truth, it is a religion that is compatible with your wishes and not, instead, the truth. Here is scripture for further reading. NOW you can understand these passages in the Bible.

[Jesus said about God] Sanctify them in the truth. Thy word is truth. John 17:17

[Jesus said about his followers] And for them I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. John 17:19

By way of definition and better understanding, the term to be "sanctified" means that a person is set aside for God's work. Anyone who with determination and honesty sets him or her self aside to do God's work is sanctified. Sanctification is not removal from secular life. People who truly follow God as he actually is, and who always put God first, striving (even when they fall some) to do God's work are sanctified.

Jesus is thus giving through these assertions some logical development that his listeners and future generations can hear and believe the truth. There is even some Greek deductive reasoning in what Jesus says ;-) Jesus is saying:

A. A person is sanctified (follows God) when he or she seeks the truth. "Sanctify them in the truth."

B. All that God says and reveals is the truth. "Thy word is truth."

C. Jesus has sanctified himself, as he is dedicated to following God, who is the truth. "And for them I sanctify myself..."

Therefore, in conclusion, logically, so that since God is the truth, Jesus has sanctified himself to God, those who believe all that Jesus says and does are now also sanctified to God in the truth. "...that they also may be sanctified in truth."

Just as an aside, even though Jesus as he lived was preaching to Jews, obviously many who listened to him were not Jewish and many of those were educated in Greek philosophy and logic. All who heard this would have had their socks knocked off, as Jesus was also "speaking their language" by using deductive reasoning based on clear assertions and classic Greek logic.

All you who read and love the scriptures, after understanding this you can read John 17 and it will speak to you, in Jesus' words, as it has never spoken to you before, as you will see the threads of how Jesus brings the fabric of truth together as the basis and foundation for faith. Jesus explained that faith comes from truth first. Jesus explains that the miracles and the works, and the explanations of his fulfillment of all the scriptures of prophesy from the very beginning are given by God as truth first, and then secondly the foundation of faith.

That is the profound difference between those who seek the truth first, and those who seek an image of what they consider and assume to be "the right religion."

Let me now ask one further question. Many argue that all religions lead to God. Really? You mean if the Holocaust son or daughter just tags along with any potential male of the right age that he will serve as their "actual father?" Really? No, untruthful roads do not lead to God. That does not mean that God does not forgive those who grew up in untruthful circumstances, for only God knows how he judges those who are raised without knowing Him as he truthfully is. However, God will of course be stern to those who do not attempt to discern the truth first. The Qur'an, by the way, is also, using different style of wording, focused on truthfulness first, and faith as the natural outflow second.

Surah 10:32-33 This then is Allah, your true Lord, and what is there after the truth but error; how are you then turned back?
Thus does the word of your Lord prove true against those who transgress that they do not believe.

This passage from the Qur'an echoes very much the flow of logic that Jesus uses. Here the logic flow is:

The true God is the true God.
If one rejects truth in any matter, the alternative to truth is therefore error.
How does one return to believing the truth if one believes in error?
One does so by observing the results of the proof of truth, compared to the lack of results among those who believe in error.

There is the famous saying "The truth shall make you free."

Jesus therefore said to the Jews who had come to believe in him, "If you abide in my word, you shall be my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:31-33.

Again, Jesus uses the logic whereby if one abides (lives within) the words of Jesus (who has sanctified himself to no other purpose than to serve God, who is the Truth), then one becomes disciples of Jesus, and thus likewise know the truth about God also. Furthermore, the truth is liberation from slavery, the slavery of error and of sin. Jesus explains why truth liberates those who are enslaved (and don't even know it) in John 8:34-38, and this becomes an extended debate with those who don't understand that they are enslaved because they don't recognize the truth when it is speaking to them, either from God himself or Jesus.

So here is the error in logic of believing that "all faiths" "lead to God." "All faiths" do not contain equal amounts, if any, of truth, anymore than all men of a certain age and region are therefore the prospective son's or daughter's actual lost father. People are confusing good behavior with truth! Perhaps "all faiths" assert certain consistent moral codes and behaviors. That does not mean that all of them are the "right faiths" and it certainly does not mean that they are equally "the truth." The prospective son or daughter may have a happy life with the "any man will do" father, until years later they discover that while they had their happy life their actual father was unrecognized by them. Oops.

Trust the truth. Anyone who is the least bit mature wants to know the truth of things, not error, misunderstandings, lies and false leads. The truth is the truth (anything that is not the truth is false and an error). The actual truthful matter leads one to the actual God of truth. Believing in error or falsehood leads to an erroneous path to an erroneous world view, containing an incorrect and incomplete understanding of the truth about God and the truth of God.

To explain a bit more about the temptation to follow what "feels" like "nice" beliefs since they are "moral" consider this. Suppose the seeking son or daughter asks a resident if their lost father lives in a certain village. Suppose the villager thinks, "Hmm, I know a really nice guy who is a lonely man. I'll tell this seeking child that I know for sure that man is their actual father, even though he isn't. In fact, I am doing a good deed!" Again, the seeking child may have a great life with the wrong father, but what happens to the actual father who never sees his child again?

THAT is the risk of not seeking the truth first.

I hope this has been and will be helpful to you and yours.

Readings from the Qur'an

114:1-4

Say: I seek refuge in the Lord of men, The King of men, The God of men, From the evil of the whisperings of the slinking.


51:15-18

Surely those who guard (against evil) shall be in gardens and fountains. Taking what their Lord gives them; surely they were before that, the doers of good. They used to sleep but little in the night. And in the morning they asked forgiveness.


48:4-5

He it is Who sent down tranquility into the hearts of the believers that they might have more of faith added to their faith-and Allah's are the hosts of the heavens and the earth, and Allah is Knowing, Wise-

That He may cause the believing men and the believing women to enter gardens beneath which rivers flow to abide therein and remove from them their evil, and that is a grand achievement with Allah.

Modern "cleanliness" is not so clean

Believe me, I do not enjoy it when I am forced to assume a lecturing and somewhat preachy “school marmish” tone with my blog readers, but there we have it: it is often necessary. For those of you who are young or non-English native language readers, a “school marm” is what the female teacher in a one room school house used to be called back in the prairie and Western settlement days. It is slang for a woman teacher who has to keep a strict rein on her pupils, who are rowdy and undisciplined. So with that as a foreword and forewarning, here is the subject: how modern notions of “cleanliness” have contributed to destroying the planet’s health, has reduced rather than improved human health, and has resulted in unbalanced mental and emotional views about “cleanliness.”

This is mostly going to be a history and social lesson and rumination, but here is the theology link: The often quoted “cleanliness is next to godliness” is not a quotation from the Bible. In fact, the only cleanliness referred to in the Bible was related to 1) religious injunctions and strictures, 2) hospitality and 3) spiritual and soul cleanliness, not the vanity of the body. I’m going to return to this subject later on and describe how “cleanliness” “worked” in Biblical times, but first I need to give my mostly youthful and affluent readership a few rings on the clue phone about recent history of modern “cleanliness.”

Let us start with the primary concern (aka obsession) among westerners, which is “washing” by using water in either a bath or most modernly the shower. Baths have, in general, become passé and are often not even installed in modern structures, with the assumption being everyone either uses the shower or if they want to “soak,” they do so for recreation, social and erotic reasons in hot tubs, Jacuzzis and so forth. So to keep it simple let’s talk about showers in the modern vernacular, but understand that all bodily washing previous to the past several decades was conducted in a bath tub or other container.

Why is this? Well, my young and spoiled audience, until recently having water pumped into a house at all was a luxury, not something that one would squander in a running shower that goes right down the drain. Further, the fuel to heat the water was likewise scarce. For nearly two thousand years since Biblical times until pretty much the 1950’s, water and the fuel to heat it required often backbreaking work to prepare and was expensive for the average impoverished or marginally poor family. Now here’s the rub: just because for two thousand years people did not shower that does not mean they were “dirty,” “unclean” or “smelled bad.” That is one of the great delusions of this post-intellectual society where people have skewed and distorted notions regarding just about everything. So I’m going to tell you “what it was like” as recently as the 1950’s, when I was growing up.

There is an old expression “the Saturday night bath.” This came about from the reality that the average poor family did indeed have a bath only once a week. The water was pumped from outside the house and carried by many trips with the bucket into the central location (usually the kitchen), where a large tub was filled with the water, cold water. However, if this was to be a warm bath, each bucket of water was heated, using precious coal or cut firewood, before being added to the tub. Then each person in the family took turns in the tub, using the same water.

One of the housekeeper’s main chores was to keep the family with a good supply of soap, which was made by hand by each family. What is soap? Soap is a substance that facilitates cleaning. It is not an antiseptic, as so many crazy people think today, though it had a slight element of it. Here is how soap “works.” Soap is made up of a combination of three substances that do the following: one dissolves dirt, one is abrasive to scrub the dirt away, and one is slightly reactive in an astringent way, kind of a slight antiseptic but also to make the dirt bubble up somewhat as it is scraped away. Thus soap is made up of a fat (from either an animal or plant oil), an abrasive such as ashes or sand, and a reactive material such as lye. The fat dissolves the dirt and outer layer of skin, the abrasive sloughs it away, and the reactive material makes it easy to remove and is somewhat antiseptic. Now people did not know about germs and so forth but being farmers and animal hide tanners they knew about rot. That is how people over the years realized to use substances such as lye in soap, without realizing they were also destroying some germs.

So having a bath was a huge amount of work, with hauling the water, heating it up, and using preciously made soap, for most people who were until modern times poor and of the lower classes. Even when most homes had hot water bathrooms and bath tubs in the 1950s onward, poor people still maintained a high standard of cleanliness in between infrequent baths. Whoa, wait! Did you read that right or did I make a typo? Did I really mean to say these poor slobs maintained a “high” standard of cleanliness? Didn’t I mean that they were dirty bums? Nope, I meant what I said. How did people “stay clean” when they only had weekly baths? They were EXPECTED TO STAY CLEAN ON A ROUTINE DAILY BASIS. Even men who worked in the coal mines and so forth, or in the field, in dirty jobs, were expected to stay as clean as possible on a daily basis. How did they do that? It’s a wonderful invention called a washcloth and a bar of soap. For several thousand years humans kept themselves clean by using the hand water pump located outdoors or in modern times, brought inside via a sink through modern plumbing, to “wash up” using a bar of soap and a washcloth. Imagine that!

That is exactly how things worked in my household growing up, and that is how I maintain my body, for the most part, to this day. We had a bathtub and a warm water plumbing but my dad being born in 1903 and my mother being a war refugee kept themselves clean on a daily basis, and taught me to do the same, until one had the weekly, or if for reason more frequently, full bath. That’s one reason I have lots of wonderful washcloths, and not because I have psychic solidarity with former POW Senator John McCain who as a POW realized one’s one washcloth was one’s only and most treasured possession. People who were thrifty with resources (water and fuel) either to be thrifty, from necessity, or because to procure them meant back breaking work, learned how to maximize cleanliness while causing a small “footprint” on earth resources over a period of hundreds of years. I have persistently favored a bar of a good soap, washcloths, and a once or twice a week bath, PERIOD.

The exception to what I outlined above was that small children received daily baths (and think about it that usually was in the kitchen sink or in a basin.) I still remember very well the small white galvanized basin that as a baby I was put into and washed: not filling up the tub until I was older. The basin had a red rim and two holes, which fascinated me as a baby (the holes were for hanging the basin if needed). So babies were washed daily, even by the poor, since they were seated in a small basin that was easy to fill with warm water. They didn’t drown too many babies back then while “bathing them” either. Being thrifty is also being safe, in many cases. The other exception in the 1950’s was when more and more kids, even in poor neighborhoods, had sports activities and access to school showers. People today do not realize what a change that was in how things were. So my brother was expected to shower at school, if he could, when he was in sports. Our cheap mother would otherwise argue and begrudge him using the shower or the tub in the house. See, I can share this with you because as I’ve pointed out in previous blog postings, I’m old enough to have personally experienced and can witness to you how the older generations lived, how they thrived, and how they coped and made do.

So let’s look at this wonderfully “clean” generation. We have droughts everywhere and the cost of water is going up, but people think they are filthy and damned if they don’t have a lavish shower, where the water runs down the drain, every day. Do they use regular biodegradable bars of soap? Nope. They use “bath products,” which are filled with chemicals that damage the environment and also the skin. So rather than “keep it clean in between” on a daily basis as my generation did (except for the rich ones of course who always had what they wanted, LOL), these same young people who worry about one’s “carbon footprint” sneer at someone like me who “keeps it clean in between” and who does not take a daily shower.

The same is true of washing one’s hair. NO ONE washed their hair on a daily basis anywhere in the world, EVER, until the last fifty years or so. People understood that washing the hair strips it of its vital oils and makes the scalp unhealthy, rather than “clean.” This is the origin of the old saying “one hundred strokes” came from: women used to brush or comb their hair with one hundred strokes every night to stimulate the scalp and distribute the hair’s natural oil. (That, by the way, is what a bird does when it “preens” its feathers. The bird is grasping each feather in its beak or bill, squeezing until the oil glands exude oil, and then spreads the oil in an even coating over each feather. That is not just beauty treatment; that is survival necessity as birds must be waterproofed using their natural oil in order to survive). Women would wash their hair on the weekly ‘bath day’ and to keep it clean in between they would comb or brush their hair and scalp with one hundred strokes.

The downfall of soap came about through two causes. One is the desire to have beautiful fragrance at a cheap price, so instead of using genuinely natural scented flowers and herbs, modern “bath products” are packed with artificial chemicals and colors that look and smell “like” “natural” substances, but are not. Indeed people are just scratching the surface at realizing how packed with cancer and pollution causing chemical such “cleanliness” products are. The other is the obsession with germs and doing a “thorough” cleaning, which means packing cleansers with nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and other chemical compounds, rather than the good old formula of oil/lye and abrasive. All of this crap, along with the wasted water of daily showers and the heating energy uses, is squandered each and every day by millions of people who think they are somehow better people for it than their grandparents who kept themselves clean as needed, and not according to one’s overheated imagination.

I spoke up about this through my local Audubon society at a city council hearing when I was in high school (1969-1970 as I recall) when modern laundry detergents, packed with nitrogen and phosphorus, were causing the lakes to be destroyed via algae blooms. For forty years I have been warning that the “cleanliness” craze was helping to destroy the planet (while, ironically, no one wants to build latrines for the over one billion people in the world who still crap in the fields and the streets). People would read and drool over science fiction like “Dune,” while then having their daily shower packed with artificial chemicals that harm both the environment and the body’s health, rather than enhance it. People don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom or handling raw food, but boy, they brag about their daily showers and their hair gels. They pay to go to fitness centers but they sneer at me for using a washcloth at the sink, as needed, and scrubbing, rather than standing like a rich moron under a shower and letting the water run down the drain.

For quite a while I have given up. I buy the lotions and bath potions in the dollar store because I like how the pretty bottles look, and artificial fragrance is all that the average person can get these days. I rub the hand creams packed with chemicals into my hands because frankly, my dears, I don’t give a rat’s ass anymore, since no one acts upon my warnings (except to make things worse, apparently) anyway. But that is one reason why I still buy and use Vaseline. No, not because like so many people I dream about anal sex. Vaseline is a natural product (from the petroleum process) that is great for skin care. My stepfather, bless his soul, used it for his aching muscles when he would work as a car mechanic, finding it helped far more than the chemical laden modern products. So people giggle at my washcloth as needed, my bars of soap, my Vaseline, my preference for a bath than a shower, while at the same time they are destroying the planet and making carbon and water “footprints” bigger than the clown shoes of Bozo the Clown.

So that takes us back to Biblical times. Jesus did not shower. Moses did not shower. Mary did not shower. Peter not only did not shower but he worked as a fisherman, and the gutting and cleaning of fish is one smelly job. The Prophet (PBUH) did not shower. Further, in the Qur’an you can read with great clarity what the spiritual philosophy behind the Bible scriptures is but that most moderns seem to miss. Washing was done in Biblical times primarily for 1) honoring God and 2) as hospitality. People washed to maintain their cleanliness before God, not because God was allocating bodily shower times. Thus the Bible contains instructions for the Israelites for RITUAL washing. Further, as everyone walked the “must wash” “bits” were the feet, and as hospitality, a host would provide such water and a basin and towels. This is why Jesus washed the feet of the Apostles, not because you were getting a glimpse of Biblical water hygiene. So here is where the Qur’an makes this clear for Bible readers who somehow miss that point. The Qur’an explains that worshippers are to wash their feet, their arms up to the elbows, and the face before worshipping God. The Qur’an then says that because God is not trying to make it difficult for people that if water cannot be found then sand can be used for the ritual cleaning. Again, it is impossible for the observant reader to miss that when the scriptures allude to washing it is only for ritual (worship of God) and hospitality reasons. The scriptures are not designed to remind a person to “keep it clean in between” since that’s just part of life and common sense is it not?

Further, what does God command when he wants a good odor in front of him? Not to squander the world’s water with prideful daily showers when they are not needed. No, God asks for sacrifice of incense at the incense altar when he wants a “good odor.” God has never sent a worshipper away for not bathing often enough or not smelling good. Sheesh!

I mention this because of the “cleanliness is next to godliness” old adage that has absolutely no Biblical or scriptural basis whatsoever. I mean, the scriptures do not tell people how often to go pee and poop since that is an “as needed” basis that has nothing to do with sanctity, does it not? But speaking of which, here is more scriptural history for you. During Biblical times people peed and pooped wherever it was convenient. It was often done in the fields since fertilizer came from both human and animal waste. People would “go” whenever and wherever they had to go. They did not have community locations or latrines, as logical as that may seem today, for the reason I just mentioned, that the fields were viewed as benefiting from whatever human or animal soil is placed there. But archeologists recently found evidence that one sect, centered in one village actually had a location outside of the village where people trekked to do their business. That was a great rarity and actually gave modern scientists realization that what seems like advancement in “cleanliness” actually caused a problem. Analysis of the soil along the path to the common latrine reveals that there was a higher evidence of harmful bacteria around that village on that path, rather than less. Why? Because people tracked the bacteria on their feet in the same places over a long period of time, allowing concentrations of bad stuff to build up rather than disperse naturally. Sanitation illness may have been HIGHER among the village that had the shared location to void outside of the village than the other Biblical villages where people just went, mostly in the fields, where it was convenient, and did not beat a path of bad germs.

This is another example of how modern people are too quick at thinking they are superior to “the old ways” and so much “cleaner.” I’m all for latrines and toilets (and again, why are over a billion people in the world not having their sewage concentrated and treated, if moderns are so interested in cleanliness). But think about that example, where without understanding the transmission of germs, that one sect’s village might have thought they had a great idea, which is everyone walk one path to a common place to poop, but instead made a germ highway that could not biodegrade, while the more primitive majority system of “going” in the fields when one needed to meant that nature could handle the biodegradation more thoroughly and without spreading and packing down germ pathways.

Before they were conquered by the whites the American Indians of the plains, the Lakota in particular, often had individuals who lived to their nineties in age and even their hundreds. Yet they did so without having daily showers and chemical laden cleansers. How did they do it? There are two keys. One is that the buffalo meat was incredibly healthy for them, along with the other natural foods that they ate. The other was that they remained active. People don’t “live longer” or are “cleaner” by having daily showers with huge carbon footprints laden with artificially scented and colored chemicals that then rush out the drain to pollute the environment, resist biodegrading and possibly cause cancers.

If I ever attend a Steelers game (which I have a lot of trouble imagining) I won’t mind at all waving my “terrible towel” except that, being mostly modest and authentic, it will be one of my “terrible washcloths.” Perhaps I could attach a hard milled bar of soap with a chain to the end of a stick and wave it as a medieval flail as my environmental and cleanliness message. Course a bar of soap, even as a flail, never hurt anyone, but a chemical filled plastic (pollutes and large footprint) pump containing a chemically filled “liquid soap” would probably do much more harm, as it most certainly does in reality. A bar of soap (for those of you who have forgotten what they look like) dissolves after use, is highly biodegradable, and comes in a waxed paper wrapper, which is also mostly harmless and biodegradable. But hey, why go with that when you can mock while using your daily high footprint plastic container and chemical biodegradable resistant goop that is flushed down the drain in order to strain the water purity even further than it already is? Who really “smells bad” in THAT case?

I hope that you have found this “helpful.”


Here's the reading from the Qur'an:

Surah 4:43 O you who believe! do not go near prayer when you are intoxicated until you know (well) what you say

[This is saying to not go to prayer while drunk but wait until one is sober. Alcohol is of course forbidden in general in Islam, but God here is specifically prohibiting approaching him in prayer while 'impaired.']

nor when you are under obligation to perform a bath

[This means that you must first perform any ritual washing]

-unless (you are) traveling on the road

[In which case one can pray as needed along the way and take the measures listed below]

-until you have washed yourselves; and if you are sick, or on a journey, or one of you come from the privy or you have touched the women, and you cannot find water,

betake yourselves to pure earth, then wipe your faces and your hands; surely Allah is Pardoning; Forgiving.


So this is not a list of times, places and methods to wash the body as one would take a modern shower, but rather it indicates the circumstances under which one must ritually wash before approaching God. So if you have ritually washed, but then before you arrive at the prayer place one of the above circumstances occur (such as going to the bathroom) and you are no longer near the water place, you can use pure earth (sand) to wash one's face and hands.

(3) Understanding hell, demons, and sin

Part III

Here I will direct your attention and comment upon mentions and descriptions of hell in the Qur’an. Paperback versions of the Qur’an, one of which I am using, number around 420 pages of text, a fraction of the length of the Bible. Yet the Qur’an has about eighty mentions of hell. This ought to tell you something.

To put this into context, let’s address the most common argument, which is that religious authorities “make up the idea of hell” in order to “scare” and “control the people.” Um, OK, but here is the problem. There were no religious authorities and indeed there were no Muslims at all, since Islam did not exist, when the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) was given and transcribed the Qur’an! What “people” would he have been trying to “scare” and “control” into “good behavior?”

Likewise, remember the Psalm citation by King David regarding the risk of people and cities going to hell. King David was “already in charge” and he was penning the Psalms as his own adoration to God put to music. He was not ranting about hell in order to “scare” or “control” people who were already the most pious and God-fearing people on earth, under his rulership! I mean, if you use a little common sense when you hear these things and look at the FACTS, you will not be so easily mislead into fatal error. It is also easier to deal with idiots who attack the faith with such accusations by calmly making note of the facts and that their facts are wrong. The MOST mentions of hell are in the Qur’an, which will be the scripture for a religion that does not even yet exist, the second most mentions of hell are by Jesus and the Apostles, who seek no rulership or control whatsoever, and the fewest mentions of hell are in the Old Testament, where it’s presence is simply understood, feared, taken for granted and not a fundamental decision point in either individual or the collective faith of the Israelites. People believed because God was there, working among them, through the prophets, in person, not because leaders “scared” the poor peasants with “made up” tales of hell. You don’t have to be a PhD or a research genius. Simply take the scriptures, look at the index, mark down the number of mentions, then correspond the number of mentions to the time in history, and you can see for yourself what I have just done here.

It is therefore logical to wonder why would there be so many mentions of hell in the Qur’an. First of all you must read the references to understand what categories they fall into. Like the Bible, the Qur’an is a mixture of explanation of how things are, and admonishments and exhortations for good behavior. In other words, not every mention of hell is done so in order to be menacing but, rather, is the way that the configuration of the God created universe and how it works is explained to the faithful. So many of the mentions of hell are not so much to scare the listener or the reader, but to be somewhat “tour guide” in describing what it is like.

Remember too that the Qur’an is not like the Gospel, which is an evangelizing type of scripture that seeks to convert the reader. The Qur’an assumes that the reader IS a believer and a Muslim. So the Qur’an has even less reason than the Biblical authors to “scare” people into believing since the Qur’an assumes the believers are the readers and studiers of the Qur’an! In fact, much of the Qur’an descriptions of hell (as you will see when I cite and comment on them) are of a “tsk, tsk, look what happens to those unbelievers who are in hell,” rather than being used to “scare” believers into good behavior. You have to use some common sense and discernment to place these simple but misunderstood theological concepts in place in your minds.

Another thing to recall, which a lot of Christians do not understand about Islam, is that the Qur’an is revelation that is given by God to the Prophet (PBUH) through the archangel Gabriel, the very same angel who in the Annunciation appears to Mary to proclaim that she will be the mother of Jesus Christ. So not to oversimplify but you need to understand that basically the Qur’an is God’s revelation spoken through an angel and thus has an “angel’s perspective.” God sends angels, instead of appearing him self, when he wants the perspective of the angel to predominate. This does not mean that angels modify God’s messages at all; in fact they are the most reliable of messengers, of course, since God speaks through them. When I say God speaks through them I do not mean angels are an amplifier of God’s voice. What I mean is that each angel is in individual but totally harmonious accord with what God wants to say and how he wants to say it: that is why a particular angel is selected by God and sent in the first place!

Thus, think about what it might mean that the gentle and joyful archangel Gabriel, who announces the coming of the Messiah to the Blessed Virgin Mary and her subsequent pregnancy, is six hundred years later the deliverer of extremely robust, even militant, revelation to the Prophet, giving birth to Islam. Of all the angels that God could have selected, why would God have selected Gabriel to be the one to reveal to Mohammad? One cannot always, or even often, understand God’s will, but it is essential to notice these facts or one misses entirely a profound piece of understanding God.

This also puts lie to those who would accuse the Prophet of just making up scriptures and that it is not divine revelation. If the Prophet were seeking to start a religious empire and “impress” potential followers, he would have fictionalized a visit by a more militant angel, such as Michael, who provides revelation or, more likely, he’d make up a new angel, an Islam angel, new to the scene, just for Islam. Instead, can we not wonder and marvel how honored the Prophet was to have the same angel who Annunciated to Mary be the one to reveal to him, but how he must have been a bit surprised by that selection too, in the very beginning?

The reason is that Islam was not a new or “made up” religion but the reuniting of the branch of the family of Abraham with knowledge of the one true God and their own shared past in the faith history documented in the Old Testament. Much of the Qur’an is explaining to these Arabic people how they are descended in biological and faith lineage from Abraham too. So one can be safe to surmise that God selected Gabriel because as the one who Announced to Mary the coming of Jesus, titling her “full of grace” and awaiting her “fiat,” her agreement to bear the Messiah, that Gabriel is the angel most harmonious with the voice God wished to use in reuniting these children of Abraham back into knowledge of him.

Thus the Qur’an, and specifically the mentions of hell, is a very robust scripture, in places quite militant, that at first blush worries some Christians. However, Christians need to understand two things. One is that Jesus himself was quite militant, as we have seen in the previous posts on this subject of hell, demons and sin. It is a myth that Jesus just tiptoed through the tulips throwing daisies around and preaching “love” and “let it all hang out.” Jesus delivered the first Biblical descriptions of hell and stark dire warnings of the consequences of sin and damnation regularly and consistently throughout his preaching and teaching. As we saw in the previous posts the Apostles learned about hell and the reality of the many ways that sin results in people being damned to hell directly from Jesus himself. Likewise, it is a mistake to think that Gabriel, because of the joy of the Annunciation, is somehow the “fluffy” angel, all sweetness and light. Just as Jesus was not sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, neither is Gabriel, the one who Announced God’s selection and preparation of Mary to be the mother of Jesus.

So now that you see this it is very logical that the archangel Gabriel, being an angel who has great power and first hand knowledge of all things of heaven, earth, and hell, should provide a great deal of information regarding hell in the course of revealing the Qur’an. Gabriel can be thought of as the faith family’s historian, who “was there” at all the big events. He’s the angel who is selected by God when God needs to “tell it like it is.” And so, far from being a “scary” scripture, the Qur’an has what modern journalists would call a great deal of “color commentary.” Gabriel, in expression of God’s will, takes the time to provide further, more detailed information about hell. The Qur’an is adorned with “additional” information provided by Gabriel on a number of topics, including even Jesus himself. One particularly fascinating “extra” that Gabriel reveals in the Qur’an, just through one casual mention, is the existence of atoms.

This helps you to see that when God selects an angel to represent him, one that is not God himself in angel form, he is selecting someone who is in total harmony with what God wants said, of course, but he is also selecting a particular voice and a particular perspective for the benefit of the listener. Imagine what the Qur’an would read like if God had sent Michael to do the dictating and the revelation. People would be shaking in their boots, a hundred times more than they would in reading the Qur’an as it is delivered by Gabriel, as robust as THAT is. Either would represent perfection of information and God’s will, but it is God’s will to select the angel who provides the tone and the relationship, and the areas of emphasis that God understands is the best for the hearer and the faith.

Can you see now why the Qur’an is so poetic and punctuated by frequent short phrases of praise of God? That is a hallmark of how angels really “speak.” Angels rarely speak without punctuating all that they say with praise of God. Angels are like the person who loves another person so much that they punctuate every sentence they say to the other person with “by the way, I love you” tacked on to the end, except angels continually shout the praise and glory of God, since that is their fundamental nature. This is why the Qur’an is so obviously written in the vocal intonation of an angel, and most specifically Gabriel.

I’m going to be a little tongue in cheek but very serious here. Imagine if it were the archangel Michael who was selected by God to deliver the revelation of the Qur’an to the Prophet. There would be that punctuation of praise for God just as with Gabriel, but Mohammad would probably have had to duck for cover as the walls shake every time that Michael would shout praise of God into Mohammad’s head! I also can easily imagine that every other sentence of scripture would contain “Get down on your knees NOW!” Ha. And if Michael dictated the Qur’an to the Prophet there would be much less of the tender moments describing baby Jesus and the virtue of Mary. No, one could imagine that Michael would be much more emphasizing of the suffering of both Jesus and Mary and punctuated with “get down on your knees NOW,” in his Christian color commentary sections of the Qur’an. Both a Qur’an delivered by Michael and a Qur’an delivered by Gabriel would be the word of God, effective and true for the faith, but they would have different intonations representing the different aspects of God’s will that each represent. If you think the Qur’an is short in length and somewhat terse now, imagine what the version delivered by the Michael archangel would be if God had willed it!

Understanding this, then, one must have very sober consideration of how the archangel Gabriel would be the one to reveal a Qur’an that has more than eighty mentions of hell. There ought to be a thoughtful silence right around now in each reader’s mind, as he or she absorbs that if the angel of the Annunciation delivers over eighty mentions of hell, how dire and vital that information about the reality of hell is for everyone. The Qur’an is delivered six hundred years after Jesus Christ and hell is mentioned even more than by Jesus himself, not less. Clearly the need to understand the reality of hell only grows with time and so called “human progress,” not less.

2:24 But if you do (it) not and never shall you do (it), then be on your guard against the fire of which men and stones are the fuel; it is prepared for the unbelievers.

This is the first mention of hell in the Qur’an, already on the second page of scripture. Can you not hear Gabriel’s voice when you read this? The “it” refers to serving God and believing his prophets. Is it not crystal clear that this first mention of hell is phrased by someone who has seen it with his own eyes? The very first mention of hell contains the stark visual that in hell a fire burns that has as its fuel both the bodies of the unbelievers who are damned there, but also the melting stone around it. This is not just an admonishment phrase; this is an eyewitness descriptive phrase. If you ever wondered what real “angel speak” is like, that is one of the best examples. Gabriel in one short terse sentence says that if one does not believe and serve God and, further, one will never change one’s ways to do so in the future, then be warned of going to the place that is prepared for those types of people, where the people and the stones burn as fuel to the fire. Gabriel is describing a both a progression of human choice of believing and describing the visuals of a place where one ends up if the wrong choice is made.

If that is not stark and chilling enough in its factual eyewitness simplicity for you, read the second mention of hell:

2:206 And when it is said to him, guard against (the punishment) of Allah; pride carries him off to sin; therefore hell is sufficient for him; and certainly it is an evil resting place.

Here Gabriel once again describes first a progression of human behavior, and then the consequence in an “eyewitness” way. In this citation it is described that the person in this example, when told to beware of being punished by God, ignores the warning because of his own pride and certainty that he can do whatever he wants, including to commence or continue to sin. So Gabriel observes that a typical person who ends up in hell first hears the warning, is filled with pride, and therefore through his pride ignores the warning and pride then leads him to sin. Notice the coolness of the phrasing “hell is sufficient for him.” Angels like Gabriel do not rant because they are detached, having seen millions of souls be saved, and millions of souls be damned. Gabriel is very cool and dry, stating what he has seen many times, and thus you can easily hear his voice as he calmly gives to the Prophet the assessment that “hell is sufficient” and “certainly it is an evil resting place.”

3:12 Say to those who disbelieve: You shall be vanquished, and driven together to hell; and evil is the resting-place.

3:103 And hold fast by the covenant of Allah all together and be not disunited, and remember the favor of Allah on you when you were enemies, then He united your hearts so by His favor you became brethren; and you were on the brink of a pit of fire, then He saved you from it; thus does Allah make clear to you His communications that you may follow the right way.

3:131 And guard yourselves against the fire which has been prepared for the unbelievers.

3:151 We will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve, because they set up with Allah that for which He has sent down no authority, and their abode is the fire; and evil is the abode of the unjust.

This warning about hell is directed toward those who establish false religions and speak as false prophets in supposedly God’s name, but do not in fact have any legitimacy or authority from God. An unbeliever is either someone who does not believe in God at all or who believes in false gods.

3:191 Those who remember Allah standing and sitting and lying on their sides and reflect on the creation of the heavens and the earth: Our Lord! Thou hast not created this in vain! Glory be to Thee; save us then from the chastisement of the fire.

Again, this is a marvelous, complex example of hearing God’s instruction through the voice of an angel. First Gabriel paints the image of how humans through all times, while standing, sitting, or lying in repose, spend time thinking about how the heavens and earth are created. Again you cannot miss the sense of seeing generations of humans pondering creation as seen firsthand by Gabriel. Gabriel then exclaims glory to God (since that’s what angels do since they understand and are immersed in the glory and grandeur of full knowledge of God’s greatest and goodness.) Gabriel then takes on the voice of what a human should say to God when he or she ponders creation, which is to offer glory and plead for salvation from the punishment of hell. What a richness of verse that one could have extended meditation upon, tutored directly by the angel Gabriel through his eyes.

3:192 Our Lord! Surely whomsoever Thou makest enter the fire, him Thou hast indeed brought to disgrace, and three shall be no helpers for the unjust.

3:197 A brief enjoyment! Then their abode is hell, and evil is the resting-place.

This is a pithy observation indeed; the sinner and unbeliever may have a grand life, but it is enjoyed in a hurry and then gone when one finds one’s self in hell for eternity.

4:56 (As for) those who disbelieve in Our communications, We shall make them enter fire; so oft as their skins are thoroughly burned. We will change them for other skins, that they may taste the chastisement; surely Allah is Mighty, Wise.

Here Gabriel is clearly articulating God’s own words. How do we know this? We know because there is the use of what is called the “imperial we.” When the “imperial we” is used it does not mean multiple people, but it means that the divinity or the king speaks with authority for all. When a human king says “We” he means himself, but he has a multitude of authority. When God is speaking his own precise words in the Qur’an, he often uses the imperial we. Notice that this is a grimmer description of the crispy fried reality of those in hell. It is not Gabriel’s dry and detached perspective; it is a hint of the wrath of God in his own words. This is also factual information that is confirmed in the Bible that the bodies of those in hell are not destroyed, but are tormented and burned over and over unceasingly.

4:121 These are they whose abode is hell, and they shall not find any refuge from it.

The “these” in this citation are those who listen to the temptations sent by Satan and his minions.

7:18 He said: Get out of this (state), despised, driven away; whoever of them will follow you, I will certainly fill hell with you all.

This is part of the telling of the story of the fall of the disobedient angels and the disobedience of Adam and Eve.

7:38 He will say: Enter into fire among the nations that have passed away before you among jinn and men; whenever a nation shall enter, it shall curse its sister, until when they have all come up with one another into it; the last of them shall say with regard to the foremost of them: Our Lord! These led us astray, therefore give them a double chastisement of the fire. He will say: Every one shall have double but you do not know.

There are two important points to be made here, both of which are confirmed in the Bible. The first is that entire nations can and do go to hell, as King David states in Psalms, discussed in previous blogging here. Nations that structure themselves to be unbelievers and sinners drag themselves and all who follow them in a slide into hell as a group. So that is the first important point to understand. The second is that there are no friends and allies in hell. Each sinner nation will blame other nations that they used as the role model and thus they both end up in hell. Even in the dreadful punishment of hell the damned do not pray for mercy but haggle over demanding that those who “got them there” get “double” extra punishment. God observes that they already are all receiving the most severe punishment without discrimination. Hell: the equal opportunity and egalitarian pit of eternal suffering and fire.

7:179 And certainly We have created for hell many of the jinn and the men; they have hearts with which they do not understand, and they have eyes with which they do not see, and they have ears with which they do not hear; they are as cattle, nay, they are in worse errors; thee are the heedless ones.

Jinn is the Islamic expression for demonic influences. This passage requires careful understanding and we know this is God speaking using very precise words. When God says that he (imperial we) created hell for many of the jinn and men, God does not mean that specific people are created predestined to hell. It means that God in his all knowing of course realizes from birth and in advance all that a person will decide, and thus that many people, despite being offered chances to be saved, will turn them down and end up in hell. Just because God “knows” in advance who will do what and will be saved or not does not mean that he creates them predestined nor does he cease to offer them opportunities to be saved. By listing those people’s hearts, eyes and ears, God is using an imagery of the specific ways that he sends spiritual help to try to appeal to their hearts, to open their eyes, or to hear what they need to hear to be saved, but they are too heedless and persist in error to recognize the help or to accept and believe it. So if you read this passage too fast you might think this is a “predestined to be damned” statement while the opposite is true. It is a statement that even when God knows what people will do he continues to send messages to those people’s hearts, eyes and ears, but they do not accept those messages.


9:81 Those who were left behind were glad on account of their sitting behind Allah’s Apostle and they were averse from striving in Allah’s way with their property and their persons, and said: Do not go forth in the heat. Say: The fire of hell is much severe in heat. Would that they understand (it).

This is actually an example of hell being mentioned kind of in a rueful joking way among the Prophet’s travelers. They are speaking of the actual heat of battle and travel, and then make kind of a rueful joke about hell being a really hot place, so stop complaining about the daytime heat and get on with the Prophet’s work.

10:52 Then it shall be said to those who were unjust: Taste abiding chastisement; you are not requited except for what you have earned.

Like the Bible it is emphasized that those who are unjust in general, not just breaking a specific law of God or being an unbeliever per se, will earn hell in return (requited) for their unjustness.


14:16-17 Hell is before him and he shall be given to drink of festering water. He will drink it little by little and will not be able to swallow it agreeably, and death will come to him from every quarter, but he shall not die; and there shall be vehement chastisement before him.

There is no water per se in hell but only the festering fluid of the burning fire and brimstone, which people in hell will actually try to drink to quench their thirst. If only all of you truly realized how horrifying hell is.

14:28-30 Have you not seen those who have changed Allah’s favor for ungratefulness and made their people to alight into the abode of perdition; (Into) hell? They shall enter into it and an evil place it is to settle in. And they set up equals with Allah that they may lead (people) astray from His path. Say: Enjoy yourselves, for surely your return is to the fire.

This passage asks if the reader has not noticed people who receive great favor from God, only to return ingratitude back to God instead of thanks. These people will end up in hell. To give an example this passage describes those who receive blessings from God but who then ascribe those blessings to idols, false gods or their own power, and persuade others to likewise believe that blessings come not from God but from idols or themselves. That dry voice of Gabriel returns here with pithy and somewhat sardonic “Enjoy yourselves, for surely your return is to the fire.” By return he means that everyone born comes from God, since he creates the soul, but the good return to God in heaven, while the bad “return” not to God but to hell. “Return” means the dispensation of the soul, not that the soul was in hell previously and is “going back there.”

15:43-44 And surely Hell is the promised place of them all. It has seven gates; for each gate there shall be a separate party of them.

This is part of the dialogue between God and Satan after Satan tempted Adam and Eve into sin, and Satan refused to bow and honor the sacredness of God’s creation of man. So God tells Satan that even though he, Satan, refuses to honor humans, that he, Satan, does not have rulership over humans except for those who he, Satan, persuades to follow him. God then states that those who follow Satan will end up in hell as that is the “promised” place of those who deviate from God and follow Satan.

God then mentions that there are seven gates to hell. Notice that the fact that hell has gates is confirmed in the Bible as Jesus Christ also states that when he promises Peter that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church. Why are there multiple gates? They represent the different ways that people find their way to hell through different patterns of sin and wickedness. For example some enter hell through their lack of belief and their work to destroy the faith of others, while others enter hell due to performing evil deeds such as murder. So the fact there are multiple gates to hell is just a way to understand that there are well understood patterns of behavior that differ among people but bring them to the same place.

The Qur’an quotes God as saying there are specifically seven gates. Notice too that this same passage uses a familiar Biblical phrase “promised” as in the Promised Land but in this sense the “promised land” is hell for those who follow Satan. Likewise the fact that there are seven gates to hell indicates that hell uses what is considered a divine number, seven, in its obverse. In other words, we see in both the Bible and the Qur’an that Satan and his minions imitate earthly and heavenly concepts. The number seven in both Judeo-Christian and Arabic culture tends to represent divine goodness. Thus God points out that hell has seven gates, in oppositional counterpoint to the goodness of the gates of heaven.

16:29 Therefore enter the gates of hell, to abide therein; so certainly evil is the dwelling place of the proud.

Once again the point that excessive pride is a most certain way to find one’s home in hell.

There is much more very useful information and very “meaty” perspective regarding hell in the remaining chapters, which we can look at in future postings on this subject.

A reading from the Qur'an

Surah 11:56

Surely I rely on Allah, my Lord and your Lord; there is no living creature but He holds it by its forelock; surely my Lord is on the right path.

The patriarch Jacob in the Qur'an

A while ago I wrote a series of posts about Jacob, one of the Old Testament (Torah) patriarchs. I promised to then turn to examining the Qur’an for all references to Jacob (Yaqoub) contained therein, and so now, here is that continuation of the topic. See previous posts about Jacob under the label of “Jacob.”

As a reminder of who Jacob is and his genealogy, here is a summary. Remember that Abraham, the patriarch of what would become the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths, was commanded by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac. This was a test of Abraham before granting him to be the father of all the divine faiths in the one God, and when Abraham demonstrated that he would do as the Lord commanded the angel of the Lord stopped him and substituted a ram. Isaac became prosperous, had sons, one of whom was Jacob, who supplanted the birthright of his brother Esau. Jacob was blessed by his father Isaac and earned through his faithfulness the blessings of God. Jacob had twelve sons, each of whom became the founder and patriarch of one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. One son, Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, became favored by the Pharaoh due to his gift of dream interpretation by God, and hence saved not only Egypt but the entire region, including the Israelites, from seven years of famine.

Jacob is first mentioned in the second chapter of the Qur’an. In the Qur’an, the first chapter is a seven line introduction, while the second chapter is a lengthy two hundred and eighty six lines which sets forward the basic origins and belief context of Islam. The purpose of this chapter regarding the events that are recorded in the Torah (Old Testament of the Bible) is to neither refute them, copy and modify them, or exclusively claim them, as many Christians (and some Muslims) have incorrectly believed. Rather, the Prophet (PBUH) is recording what he has learned from God, through the archangel Gabriel, which is that the people who will become the Muslims are faith descendants of Abraham, just like the Jews and the Christians. To use a secular expression, the Qur’an is like a person who discovers his or her ancestry, and finds they belong to a third branch of a shared family. This shared family is defined as those to acknowledge only the one God, the one who created Adam, whose descendants faithfully knew and worshipped God, culminating in God’s blessing of Abraham and his descendants.

Because that is the purpose of this chapter, and indeed the entire Qur’an, this is why 1) the Qur’an does not record events in the detail that is in the Torah (Old Testament) because Muslims accept that all of those events took place and Gabriel therefore certainly did not repeat them all in the telling for the Prophet (PBUH) and 2) the patriarchs call themselves “Muslims.” “Muslim” a believer in Islam where Islam is defined as belief in the one true God, the same one who created Adam and was worshipped and served by his descendants in the faith, culminating in God’s covenant with Abraham where God promises Abraham will “father a multitude.” The archangel Gabriel is like someone who seeks out a branch of the family who do not even know who they are, and who explains it to them, and Gabriel does this, as in all things, at the behest of God. The Qur’an serves this one purpose, in addition to its other purposes, of recording the explanation that the archangel Gabriel (Jibreel) provides to the Prophet (PBUH) of the origins and the purpose of these Arabic people who will now become the Muslim people. At that time the Arabians lived among Jews and Christians, but did not realize their common origin or that they shared the same God. They also did not realize that they lived among sacred sites established by Adam and Abraham.

So here is the first mention of, specifically, Jacob.

Surah 2: 132-133, 136, 140
And the same did Ibrahim [Abraham] enjoin on his sons and (so did) Yaqoub [Jacob]. O my sons! Surely Allah [God] has chosen for you (this) faith, therefore die not unless you are Muslims.

Nay! Were you witnesses when death visited Yaqoub, when he said to his sons: What will you serve after me? They said: We will serve your God and the God of your fathers, Ibrahim [Abraham] and Ismail [Ishmael] and Ishaq [Isaac], one God only, and to Him do we submit.

Say: We believe in Allah and (in) that which had been revealed to us, and (in) that which was revealed to Ibrahim [Abraham] and Ismail [Ishmael] and Ishaq [Isaac] and Yaqoub [Jacob] and the tribes, and (in that which was given to Musa [Moses] and Isa [Jesus], and (in) that which was given to the prophets from their Lord, we do not make any distinction between any of them, and to Him do we submit.

Nay! Do you say that Ibrahim [Abraham] and Ismail [Ishmael] and Yaqoub [Jacob] and the tribes were Jews or Christians? Say: Are you better knowing or Allah? And who is more unjust than he who conceals a testimony that he has from Allah? And Allah is not at all heedless of what you do.

So Jacob is mentioned in the context of the other patriarchs, as a list of those faithful patriarchs who personally pledged themselves in covenant with God. The archangel Gabriel, therefore, is explaining to the Prophet (PBUH) what has transpired in the ages past, where the forefathers pledged themselves to the one and only God and rather than repeating all that is in the Torah (Old Testament) Gabriel provides statements of faith and avowal that summarize the feelings and faith of these forefathers.

For example, look at 2:133, which is a one line summary of Jacob’s deathbed reiteration of faith, which he solicits from his sons before he dies. This is a one line summary of what is described in detail in Genesis 48 and 49, two chapters that give a detailed accounting of Jacob being sick, taking to his deathbed, and blessing Joseph and his sons, and then to bless and prophesy for each of his own “twelve tribes of Israel” sons. The archangel Gabriel is, at the behest of God, taking the Prophet (PBUH) “back in time” in a sense, to learn “the bottom line” of the events that form what will become the Muslim, Christian and Jewish faiths.

This is why God did not send the archangel Gabriel to say to the Arab people, “You shall become either Jews or Christians.” That would be theologically incorrect. In the time of the patriarchs there were, obviously, no Christians yet but also, if you think about it, there were no “Jews” either. The Exodus had not happened yet, and thus Moses and the Law giving by God were still in the future. Thus in 2:140 God, through the archangel Gabriel, strongly enforces upon the Prophet (PBUH) that the patriarchs had a covenant of recognition and worshipping the one true God, a covenant that cannot yet be ascribed to a particular name of faith. This overall covenant with God is what the name “Islam” and the followers of Islam, “Muslims,” now comes into being, but the “new” name of the “new” faith is not disparaging Judaism or Christianity, but referencing back to the common faith source and giving themselves identification of that branch of the faith.


To look at our analogy, suppose our genealogist discovers that he and two of his neighbors have descended from an ancestor called “Smith.” The last names of the genealogist’s neighbors are “Csmith” and “Jsmith” and Jsmith is a descendent of Abraham through Moses, and Csmith is a descendant of Abraham through Jesus. Well, discovering that all three trace back to “Smith” means that it would be incorrect for the genealogist who has just discovered his place in this family tree to now change his name to “Csmith” or “Jsmith.” He is a descendent of “Smith.” So what should he call himself and his family to now become part of the authentic fold that he has just discovered that he belongs to? He decides that he cannot trace every relationship and descendent from Smith to the present, and thus pick up one of names in his own lineage, so he calls his entire family “Smith.” “Smith” is “Muslim.”

To use a contemporary term, this is “reconnecting with one’s roots.” The Arabians at the time of the Prophet (PBUH) obviously did not have a written record of their biological lineage all the way back to Abraham, as clearly do the Jews and the Christians. So it would be incorrect, both theologically and culturally, to now “decide” that the future “Muslims” is of either Jews or Christians. Finding one shares with others a great etc. grandfather does not mean that you are now the sons and daughters of the other two branches; you are sons and daughters of the common faith ancestor. This is why God, through the archangel Gabriel, gifted Muslims with the right to refer to the patriarchs as being “Muslims.” It is God’s way of saying, “Because you do not have in writing your lineage, then call yourselves ‘Smith,’ do not call yourself or adopt the ways of “Csmith” or “Jsmith.” In 2:136 you see that Muslims acknowledge and revere the Moses and Jesus “ancestry,” but they do not claim to insert themselves now into those branches of the tree.

Another way to understand this is to realize that what God had with the patriarchs, “Covenant,” is the heart of both of the ancestral Jewish and Christian faiths. Over time as the faiths matured, “Covenant” came to mean more than pledges of belief by the patriarchs to God, and God’s blessing in return. “Covenant” came to mean the set of Law for the Jews, and the fulfillment of the Old Covenant and the making of the New Covenant for the Christians. Thus use of the word or concept of “Covenant” would be problematic for these new Muslims and God, with his all-knowing and foreseeing, avoided this problem without eliminating, clearly, that Muslims are heirs of the patriarchal covenants. Pledging to God and having God confer recognition and gift in return, a covenant, is the basis for the Muslim “branch of faith and heritage” too. The covenant with these people who have now had their faith ancestry revealed to them, therefore, became codified not by that word “covenant,” but by the Qur’an. The Qur’an is God’s “covenant” with Muslims.

See, I know that this last sentence gives some Jewish and Christian readers a shock. That is exactly why God, in his wisdom, foresaw this problem of understanding and therefore gave the Muslims their own path and terminology to reference their share of Abraham’s covenantal descendant multitude. God never errs and he is never inconsistent; it is humans who fail to understand God’s consistency. God gathered the people who would become Muslims, believers who did not know their own faith history and heritage, and reintroduced them to the patriarchs, but gave them the terminology that would not cause confusion with the other children of Abraham.

There is a further problem that God avoids on behalf of humans by giving the Muslims their own “covenant” that references back to the original covenants with the forefathers and patriarchs. That problem is that the Jewish faith struggled with continual idolatry, as is repeatedly documented in the Old Testament, with even King Solomon succumbing to it in his old age. This is another reason why there are swipes at the Jewish faith regarding being “polytheistic” in the Qur’an and why Muslims are made by God to basically hit the “reset” button for themselves, rather than become Jews and enter the fray of keeping pure the continuity of that faith. Likewise early Christianity suffered from the inevitable arising of heresies. Muslims, as you see clearly in these and other citations, do not deny at all Jesus, and instead revere him. The concern is that early Christians (and indeed many nominally Christian moderns) argue about the “true nature” of Jesus for two thousand years, endangering their own faith in the one God. This is why God permitted Muslims to revere Jesus, but run rather than embrace Christianity and thus, as I commented above about Jews, “enter the fray” of idolatry.

It is like even if our genealogist was tempted to rename his family either Csmith or Jsmith, and join in their branches wholeheartedly, but he discovers that many of them quarrel about the foundations of their family, Smith. Worse he discovers that sects of those branches claim to have “Mr. Real-smiith” and “Ms. Super-smyth.” This is why one observes what seems to be a contradiction in the Qur’an, which is reverence for Moses and Jesus, and their descendent branches of the faith, but also a disparaging caution about those faiths. That is a topic for a whole other commentary and discussion, but I’d be remiss not to mention and explain it here as we cite passages from the Qur’an that are right next to what are, for many, both Muslim or not, some difficult to understand statements about Judaism and Christianity.

Surah 3:84

Say: We believe in Allah and what has been revealed to us, and what was revealed to Ibrahim and Ismail and Ishaq and Yaqoub and the tribes, and what was given to Musa and Isa and to the prophets from their Lord; we do not make any distinction between any of them, and to Him do we submit.

This is a repeat of what was said in 2:136, which is to punctuate throughout the Qur’an the basic statements of belief as asserted by the faith ancestry.

Surah 6:84
And We gave to him Ishaq and Yaqoub; each did We guide, and Nuh [Noah] did We guide before, and of his descendants, Dawood [David] and Sulaiman [Solomon] and Ayub [Job] and Yusuf [Joseph] and Haroon [Aaron]; and thus do We reward those who do good (to others).

Here Jacob is mentioned in a list of the holy people who God has given to humanity, through Abraham, as gifts. Notice that God is stating his guidance of these faith forefathers, a mixed list of patriarchs, kings, prophets and the faithful and his reward for those who are charitable. This is an example of where the passage goes in a slightly different direction than those who detract from religion may expect. God guides these faithful and rewards them, but where one expects to read that God rewards them for their faith, one sees that God rewards those he guides when they do good to others, when they love their neighbor and are charitable.

Surah 11:71
And his [Abraham] wife [Sarah] was standing (by), so she laughed, then We gave her the good news of Ishaq [Isaac] and after Ishaq of (a son’s son) Yaqoub [Jacob].

Here Jacob is mentioned that through the one miracle of God providing Abraham and Sarah with a child in their old age, Isaac, there is a cascading of goodness forward in time beyond the one child, such as the grandchild, Jacob now coming into being because his father was conceived through the gift of God. So the deeper meaning of this passage beyond reiterating the laughter of Sarah at the thought of becoming pregnant in her old age and restating that God keeps his word of the miracle, but that the “good news” cascades forward through the generations.

Surah 12:38
And I follow the religion of my fathers, Ibrahim and Ishaq and Yaqoub; it beseems us not that we should associate aught with Allah; this is by Allah’s grace upon us and on mankind, but most people do not give thanks.

Here Joseph attests his faith in front of the Pharaoh, including mention of his father Jacob, before interpreting the dream of famine of the Pharaoh.

Surah 19:6
Who should inherit me and inherit from the children of Yaqoub, and make him, my Lord, one in whom Thou art well pleased.

These are words that describe the concern that Zakariya (Zacharias), the Jewish priest during the time just before the birth of Jesus, had because he and his wife had no children. The Qur’an relates what we know from the Gospel of St. Luke 1, which is that the angel of the Lord appears to Zacharias as he was in the temple serving God with incense sacrifice, and announced that he and Elizabeth would give birth to the son who will be called John. This son will be John the Baptist, the herald of the coming of Jesus Christ.

This is an example of what is common in the Qur’an, which is to express an interior or exterior dialogue (spoken or unspoken) that quickly illuminates the faith of the speaker or thinker. Rather than repeat all of the dialogue that is in the Bible, as here in the New Testament Luke 1, in the Qur’an the priestly concern and heritage of Zacharias is illustrated by his thought where he is sad that he has no son to serve God, in the heritage of the children of Jacob.

Surah 19:49
So when he withdrew from them and what they worshipped besides Allah, We gave to him Ishaq and Yaqoub, and each one of them We made a prophet.

This passage recounts how once Abraham committed to God and withdrew from contact with pagans and non-believers, God have him sons and descendents that are true prophets.

Surah 21:72-3
And We gave him Ishaq and Yaqoub, a son’s son, and We made (them) all good.
And we made them Imams who guided (people) by Our command, and We revealed to them the doing of good and the keeping up of prayer and the giving of the alms, and Us (alone) did they serve.

Ah, now, see; take a close look at these two passages. One is a restatement of how Abraham received as a gift of God not only Abraham’s son, Isaac, but as the out flowing of having a son who is a prophet, Abraham’s son Isaac also fathers a prophet, Jacob. So at first it looks as just a restatement of how God’s mercy in granting a son moves forward in time in goodness, as that son also has a son who serves God.

But when you look at the next line, you now see that God is giving to the Muslims Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as “role models” for their Imams. Muslim Imams are not modeled after the priesthood, and this is why they are not priests, and they are not modeled after evangelists, preachers, scholars or rabbis. Muslim Imams are role modeled after the father-son-grandson filial relationship in faith as gifted by God. This is why the Imamate, the genealogy and authority of the Imams who descend from the Prophet (PBUH) are such crucial and often contentious component of Islamic faith. When Muslims ponder the Imams of their early history, and the Imams of their present, they think of the Imams as being “sons” and “grandsons” of the authentic faith, just as were Isaac and Jacob from Abraham. This is an essential component of understanding not only the theology but the living structure and dynamics of the faith of Islam, and the divisions therein.

Surah 29:27
And We granted him Ishaq and Yaqoub, and caused the prophethood and the book to remain in his seed, and We gave him his reward in this world, and in the hereafter he will most surely be among the good.

The idea of the Imam is developed further here, even though this passage does not refer to the Imamate, but is contained within a retelling of Lot’s rescue by God from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. There is the idea that the prophethood, as role modeled by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is contained and remains in their “seed.” Now this does not mean that literally it is a genetic basis for passing on the faith and prophecy. Here the Qur’an is explaining that faith is and passed on from father to son as each generation affirms their faith. Jacob would not have been the recipient and container of the “seed” of his father Isaac if Jacob disavowed God. Rather, each father must be understood as being not only a biological father, but a spiritual father, who passes on the seed of faith to their son. It is this role modeling that result in many modern day imams having sons who follow their footsteps, just as many rabbis have sons who are rabbis in the Jewish faith. The equivalent in the Catholic faith is the “laying on of the hands” when priests and bishops are consecrated and confirmed. If one looks in the Catholic Church hierarchy database, one can trace the ancestry of the consecrating bishops, back to when these records are last reliable and kept, which is the fourteenth century. The father to son to grandson role model of passing the seed of the faith is a fundamental understanding of all of the Abrahamic faiths.

Surah 38:45-7
And remember Our servants Ibrahim and Ishaq and Yaqoub, men of power and insight.
Surely We purified them by a pure quality, the keeping in mind of the (final) abode.
And most surely they were with Us, of the elect, the best.

By now it is familiar spiritual motif for you to observe that this progression from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob is a crucial role model constantly referenced within the theology of Islam. Having discovered, through revelation by God, their connection and spiritual ancestry to Abraham and his descendants, with great firmness and repetition the Muslims study and imitate the foundational manifestation of faith of these patriarchs. This passage builds on this understanding to make two points. One is that God purified each one of them. Again, it is not as though biology is the reason to pass along the seed of faith. Each spiritual heir and prophet must be purified and kept pure by God, since humans are not by themselves enough; only God can make and keep them pure. This purity allows them to always keep in mind that the earthly life is not the final destination, but the final abode is of either heaven or hell. That is the second point, which is that receiving and accepting purity from God results in both earthly gifts, such as power and insight, and also the eternal gift of being among the best, the elect, in heaven.

I hope that you have found this tracing of mentions of Jacob in the Qur’an and my accompanying commentary helpful.

Understanding God (9 of a series)

Before discussing the attribute of the infinite mercy of God, it is important to understand how God punishes. This is because humans do not seem to be able to grasp how merciful God is as long as they hold to the delusion that God punishes to be arbitrary and cruel, or to the delusion that God does not really exist as the all-knowing, and thus he does not punish at all. Whenever I discuss his mercy with humans, they always worry first to know about the punishment, hiding their own anticipation of guilt behind delusions of God's "unfairness" (too severe punishment or arbitrary) or his lack of "involvement."

A quote from the Qur'an is the most pithy in explaining the by far the most common way that God punishes. Here is the passage from the Qur'an:

Surah 22:1-2

O people! guard against (the punishment from) your Lord; surely the violence of the hour is a grievous thing.

On the day when you shall see it, every woman giving suck shall quit in confusion what she suckled, and every pregnant woman shall lay down her burden, and you shall see men intoxicated, and they shall not be intoxicated but the chastisement of Allah will be severe.

In this passage you observe two examples of God's punishment yet, how are people to interpret this, since they are examples of bad human behavior? In the first example women no longer nurse their babies and in fact, they lay down the entire burden of having children, abandoning it. And the men are not working, or protesting their women no longer caring about their children, but instead are lolling around drunk and "under the influence." So how is this punishment by God, to say nothing of being "violence" of punishment, its most severe?

It is simply this. When God seeks to punish he just steps out of the way, and grows silent, and lets humans "do what they want." The Holy Spirit stirs less and less (though never totally abandoning humans) and humans are left free to architect their own downfall. Nothing God could "think of doing" to "cause suffering" is worse than what humans come up with on their own, in their grave woundedness and hubris. And is this not exactly what we have seen in society today? Has not God let you all have "just what you wanted?" Birth control so that families are totally abandoned, abortion, pornography, sexual violence, sexual exploitation of children, violent entertainment, depressive goth and vampire "culture," use of occult tools, idolatry, alcohol and drug addiction? These are all things that have stemmed from humans deciding that they know best about being "liberated" and "sensual beings." And so millions of women have laid down and denied the joys and the responsibilities of having and caring for children, and two generations of men have been drunks and drug pushers and users. Whenever you open up a news story on any given day you can read what "joy" and "liberation" such a "free will" society has become, whether it is a child gunned down in her bed because drug gangs have a shoot out in the street, or crack or meth head parents letting their infants die of neglect, often horribly abused in addition to the lack of care. And so many women just want to be "sex in the city single" with no child and no bulges to their figure from pregnancy that there are times when I worked in Manhattan that I could go weeks without seeing a child. A generation has been skipped, and now when women (often too young) do have children, they grew up with parents who didn't have a clue how to properly and lovingly raise a child. And so you have babies born to mothers who beat them to death, or who let their boyfriends do it for them.

How can anyone not see this freak show society as punishment? I feel punished every day just watching all of you who think that you have achieved "liberation."

So when God punishes, he doesn't "zap" someone, or have a temper tantrum like humans do (for example, a Swedish rapper just drove over a California musician pedestrian, killing him, in a "crosswalk" "road rage" situation). When God has tried and tried and tried to get humans to use their free will in a healthy and loving way, and all else fails, and he must punish, he steps aside. God simply steps aside and lets all of you "do your own thing." And a woeful thing it is that you do. I love how modern atheists like to blame organized religion for everything. Gosh, yep, those bad religions, going out and making people be addicted to porn, booze, drugs, guns, forming violent street gangs, popping off children, convincing crack and meth head parents to beat them to death (maybe after first filming them being sexually abused)... yep, you sure got us there. I'm surprised that secularists and atheists "cracked the secret code" where the institutional religions are preaching all that behavior in the sermons, driving the otherwise enlightened people out to such depravity *sarcasm.* It's not a coincidence that atheists and other religion detractors have to keep quoting the same dreary "examples" (the Inquisition, Islamic extremism, etc) yet ignore that puzzlingly, the worst blights of society are the very things that the faithful, to say nothing of God, frown upon.

I can of course cite from the Bible, in addition to the Qur'an, this insight into God's prevalent form of punishment, which is to step aside and let humans do what they "really want to do," but no where is it as pithy and prescient as in this passage from the Qur'an.

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Homework assignment: So, goodness gracious, if God punishes by letting people do the wicked things they want to do, until they bring suffering onto their own heads, what does God do to bring mercy to humans? What could it possibly be? Maybe, send his Son to point the way? Maybe send the Holy Spirit to not only enlighten, but stir the guilty conscience? Maybe set some boundaries, and teach self containment, as any good parent would? You know, boundaries, those things that humans ignored and thus brought upon themselves the very things they oh so very much "wanted?" Should not be too difficult to figure out, but it's always good to discuss it together, as we will next time in this series.