This is the most delightfully mythic story I've found so far in Islam:
One night, as Muhammad was drifting off to sleep, the angels Gabriel, Michael, and Israfil flew down to him. Accompanying them was a strange creature fitted with a saddle.
"Arise, master! Ride on the back of the Buraq. He will carry you on your journey to the Lord of Power!" said Gabriel. The Buraq is a tall, winged creature, slightly larger than a donkey yet smaller than a mule; it has the face of a human, emerald-green ears, and eyes that shine like brilliant stars. It travels at the speed of light.
Muhammad mounted the Buraq and the gang set off on their adventure. They stopped at various important locations, where Gabriel acted as tour-guide:
"This is where Moses stopped to rest on his flight from Pharoah."
"This is Sinai, where Moses used to speak with God."
"This is Bethlehem, where Jesus was born and from where he spread the message of the King of the Heavens and the Earth."
Etc. Muhammad saw many other places before the gang arrived in Jerusalem. Gabriel bore a hole into a sacred rock with his finger and tied the Buraq's reins to it (so it wouldn't fly off at lightspeed).
The Ladder of Heaven descended, down from loftiest paradise. It had alternate stairs of silver and gold. Gabriel led Muhammad up the ladder until they reached the door to First Heaven.
Gabriel knocked on the door.
"Who is it?" asked the angel Ishmael, who guards First Heaven with an army of 144 million angels.
"It is Gabriel."
"Who is with you?"
"The Prophet Muhammad."
"Has he been sent for?"
"Yes."
The door opened. Inside, Muhammad met Adam, the ancestor of all humanity.
"Hey Mu, how's it going? I hear you're the latest prophet?"
Gabriel and Muhammad ascended the heavens. Each time, Gabriel knocked and the angel guards asked the same questions. In Second Heaven, Muhammad met Jesus of Nazareth and John the Baptist, who both thought Muhammad was a swell guy. In Third Heaven, he met Joseph (Technicolor Dreamcoat Joseph, not Jesus' Dad Joseph); in Fourth Heaven, he met Enoch; in Fifth Heaven, he met Aaron.
In Sixth Heaven, he met a man of astounding beauty and even greater majesty. He had a long mane of curly hair, and a long beard from which light flashed like thunderbolts. His face was stern, yet his eyes were those of a child.
"Who is this man?" asked Muhammad.
"That is Moses."
Moses wept.
"Why are you crying?" asked Muhammad.
"I am crying because I love you," Moses replied. "I am crying because of the great honour which God has granted you. O Muhammad! You are the Seal of the Prophets and the Light of Creation!"
In Seventh Heaven, he met Abraham. Then the pair reached the Lote Tree of the Furthest Boundary. A single one of its leaves was large enough to hold all living creatures. Its fruits were like huge clay jugs. On each leaf sat a crowned angel carrying a staff of light. The rivers of the world begin at the bottom of the Lote Tree; Gabriel pointed out the Nile and the Euphrates.
It was there, at the Lote Tree of the Furthest Boundary, that Gabriel revealed his true form: he had six hundred wings, each wing big enough to cover the entire earth.
Next, Muhammad was shown Hell, the Fire of God's Wrath, and met Hell's custodian, the stern-faced angel Malik.
Then Muhammad rose up beyond the top of the Lote Tree and into the presence of the Lord. God made his revelations to Muhammad, and ordered him and his followers to pray fifty times per day.
Muhammad began his descent to earth. In Sixth Heaven, Moses asked what God had commanded. Muhammad explained about the fifty prayers per day rule.
"Is he having a laugh? Get back up there and ask him to reduce the number. Your community will never be able to bear that," said Moses.
So Muhammad returned to God and asked for it to be reduced. God lowered it to 45. Muhammad returned to Moses, who once again thought that it was excessive. Muhammad kept going back and forth between God and Moses until the prayer count was reduced to 5 and Muhammad was too embarrassed to try to get it any lower:
"I have gone back and forth so much that now I feel ashamed."
He descended to earth, mounted the Buraq and flew back to Mecca.
And then he woke up.
When he told people what had happened to him, they thought it was ridiculous. They questioned him, asking him to describe Jerusalem, which he did.
"Sounds about right," the questioners assented, "so you really did travel to Jerusalem on a magical flying mount with a human head and green ears. Didn't see that one coming."
"Yep, and I met God."
"For a merchant, you weren't very good at haggling with the All-Powerful Creator of the Universe."
"You're just supposed to surrender to God's will. That's what 'Islam' means: 'surrender'. You can't argue with Ineffability."
"But, Moses?"
"Shhhhhhhh... surrender..."
Wednesday, 17 June 2015
Qur'an: Shooting Stars
This is the Quran's explanation for shooting stars:
'We set up constellations in the heavens, and made them attractive to onlookers, and We protected them against every execrable demon, except one who eavesdrops, and whom a visible shooting star pursues."
Consider an alternative explanation for shooting stars:
'Sometimes, little chunks of rock fall through space for thousands, millions, perhaps billions of years, to eventually reach the planet we call Earth, which is but one of eight planets orbiting a star we call the Sun, which is but one of over 100 billion stars in the Galaxy we call the Milky Way, which is but one of over 100 billion galaxies in what we call the Universe.
(The little chunk of rock might once have been part of a planet, shattered long ago, or a star, no longer shining.)
When the little chunk of rock reaches the Earth, it is disintegrated as it passes through what we call the Atmosphere, a layer of gas insulating the Earth's surface and allowing a process called 'Life' to occur.
From origins so lowly that we would call them Microscopic, Life spread and developed into myriad forms over billions of years. What we call Humans are one of these life-forms. Humans are biped mammals which once occupied only a small fraction of the Earth's surface, where they scavenged and hunted, and were hunted in turn. They were middling omnivores that looked for food by day, and hid from monsters by night. As tools and teamwork became advantageous, the cognitive and cooperative abilities of these Humans improved until they were able to spread across the planet, wipe out their former predators, and become the rulers of the Earth.
(They are still afraid of monsters in the dark.)
Sometimes, these Humans look up at the sky and are awed. Then they spot a disintegrating piece of rock and think 'I wonder what that is.''
(Obviously, I have oversimplified the second explanation.)
Compared to that stupendous majesty and complexity, how cheap, how tacky, how crass, how tawdry, is the idea of an Empyrean Guard chasing a Demonic Eavesdropper?
'We set up constellations in the heavens, and made them attractive to onlookers, and We protected them against every execrable demon, except one who eavesdrops, and whom a visible shooting star pursues."
Consider an alternative explanation for shooting stars:
'Sometimes, little chunks of rock fall through space for thousands, millions, perhaps billions of years, to eventually reach the planet we call Earth, which is but one of eight planets orbiting a star we call the Sun, which is but one of over 100 billion stars in the Galaxy we call the Milky Way, which is but one of over 100 billion galaxies in what we call the Universe.
(The little chunk of rock might once have been part of a planet, shattered long ago, or a star, no longer shining.)
When the little chunk of rock reaches the Earth, it is disintegrated as it passes through what we call the Atmosphere, a layer of gas insulating the Earth's surface and allowing a process called 'Life' to occur.
From origins so lowly that we would call them Microscopic, Life spread and developed into myriad forms over billions of years. What we call Humans are one of these life-forms. Humans are biped mammals which once occupied only a small fraction of the Earth's surface, where they scavenged and hunted, and were hunted in turn. They were middling omnivores that looked for food by day, and hid from monsters by night. As tools and teamwork became advantageous, the cognitive and cooperative abilities of these Humans improved until they were able to spread across the planet, wipe out their former predators, and become the rulers of the Earth.
(They are still afraid of monsters in the dark.)
Sometimes, these Humans look up at the sky and are awed. Then they spot a disintegrating piece of rock and think 'I wonder what that is.''
(Obviously, I have oversimplified the second explanation.)
Compared to that stupendous majesty and complexity, how cheap, how tacky, how crass, how tawdry, is the idea of an Empyrean Guard chasing a Demonic Eavesdropper?
'The Art of Happiness' by Epicurus
I have been getting quite impatient with the Qur'an (because it's tedious drivel), so have taken a break from it to read the extant writings of Epicurus, who lived 341-271 BCE. The religion he founded, Epicureanism, is like Hellenism's equivalent to Buddhism. Sort of. Maybe. Here are some of the things he says:
'The blessed and indestructible being of the divine has no concerns of its own, nor does it make trouble for others. It is not affected by feelings of anger or benevolence, because these are found where there is lack of strength.'
'Death means nothing to us, because that which has been broken down into atoms has no sensation and that which has no sensation is no concern of ours. It is possible to get protection from other things, but when it comes to death, all us humans live in a city without walls. We must try to make the latter part of the journey better than the first; and when we reach the end, we must keep an even keel and remain cheerful.'
'We are born once. We cannot be born a second time, and throughout eternity we shall of necessity no longer exist. You have no power over the morrow, and yet you put off your pleasure. Life is ruined by procrastination, and every one of us dies deep in his affairs.'
'Of all the things that wisdom provides for the happiness of the whole man, by far the most important is the acquisition of friendship. Every friendship is desirable for itself, but it has its origin in personal advantage. Friendship dances around the world, summoning every one of us to the gospel of the happy life.'
'Some desires are (1) natural and necessary, others (2) natural but not necessary, still others (3) neither natural nor necessary but generated by senseless whims. No pleasure is bad in itself, but the things which make for pleasure in certain cases entail disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves.'
'Justice is a kind of agreement not to harm or be harmed, made when men associate with each other at any time and in communities of any size. If somebody lays down a law and it does not prove to be of advantage in human relations, then such a law no longer has the true character of justice.'
'It is impossible to get rid of our anxieties about essentials if we do not understand the nature of the universe and are apprehensive about some of the theological accounts. Hence it is impossible to enjoy our pleasures unadulterated without science. There is no advantage in gaining security with regard to other people if phenomena occurring above and beneath the earth - in a word, everything in the infinite universe - are objects of anxiety.'
I could go on. Epicurus > Muhammad. In the first century BCE, an Epicurean called Lucretius wrote a poem attacking the polytheist religions of the Roman Empire and explaining natural phenomena using (now adorably outdated) scientific explanations. He sometimes sounds quite Dawkinsesque:
'Some people who know nothing of matter believe that nature without the guidance of the gods could not bring round the changing seasons in such perfect conformity to human needs, creating the crops and those other blessings that mortals are led to enjoy by the guide of life, pleasure. Obviously, in imagining that the gods established everything for the sake of men, they have stumbled in all respects far from the path of truth. Even if I knew nothing of atoms, I would venture to assert on the evidence of the celestial phenomena themselves, supported by many other arguments, that the universe was certainly not created for us by divine power; it is so full of imperfections.'
'The blessed and indestructible being of the divine has no concerns of its own, nor does it make trouble for others. It is not affected by feelings of anger or benevolence, because these are found where there is lack of strength.'
'Death means nothing to us, because that which has been broken down into atoms has no sensation and that which has no sensation is no concern of ours. It is possible to get protection from other things, but when it comes to death, all us humans live in a city without walls. We must try to make the latter part of the journey better than the first; and when we reach the end, we must keep an even keel and remain cheerful.'
'We are born once. We cannot be born a second time, and throughout eternity we shall of necessity no longer exist. You have no power over the morrow, and yet you put off your pleasure. Life is ruined by procrastination, and every one of us dies deep in his affairs.'
'Of all the things that wisdom provides for the happiness of the whole man, by far the most important is the acquisition of friendship. Every friendship is desirable for itself, but it has its origin in personal advantage. Friendship dances around the world, summoning every one of us to the gospel of the happy life.'
'Some desires are (1) natural and necessary, others (2) natural but not necessary, still others (3) neither natural nor necessary but generated by senseless whims. No pleasure is bad in itself, but the things which make for pleasure in certain cases entail disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves.'
'Justice is a kind of agreement not to harm or be harmed, made when men associate with each other at any time and in communities of any size. If somebody lays down a law and it does not prove to be of advantage in human relations, then such a law no longer has the true character of justice.'
'It is impossible to get rid of our anxieties about essentials if we do not understand the nature of the universe and are apprehensive about some of the theological accounts. Hence it is impossible to enjoy our pleasures unadulterated without science. There is no advantage in gaining security with regard to other people if phenomena occurring above and beneath the earth - in a word, everything in the infinite universe - are objects of anxiety.'
I could go on. Epicurus > Muhammad. In the first century BCE, an Epicurean called Lucretius wrote a poem attacking the polytheist religions of the Roman Empire and explaining natural phenomena using (now adorably outdated) scientific explanations. He sometimes sounds quite Dawkinsesque:
'Some people who know nothing of matter believe that nature without the guidance of the gods could not bring round the changing seasons in such perfect conformity to human needs, creating the crops and those other blessings that mortals are led to enjoy by the guide of life, pleasure. Obviously, in imagining that the gods established everything for the sake of men, they have stumbled in all respects far from the path of truth. Even if I knew nothing of atoms, I would venture to assert on the evidence of the celestial phenomena themselves, supported by many other arguments, that the universe was certainly not created for us by divine power; it is so full of imperfections.'
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