'Inventing Hell' by Jon M. Sweeney

Our popular conception of Hell is very medieval rather than biblical: it owes more to Dante than to the Bible, and Dante's Hell owes more to Greek myth than it does to the Bible. In this slim volume, Sweeney takes us through the development of the Medieval Christian view of Hell, which finds its ultimate expression in Dante.

In the Old Testament, there is very little mention of the afterlife. Sheol, the ancient Israelite underworld, is a dark, gloomy, underground place where people go to 'rest with their ancestors' after they die. It's an inevitable, bland destination, not a place of reward or punishment.

The afterlife changes with the influence first of Zoroastrianism, then with Greek myth and philosophy. The Greek god Hades, a colourful character rules a slightly sadistic underworld with ironic punishments. The Elysium Fields, where the chosen of gods go for an afterlife of happiness.

Platonic philosophy teaches the immortality of the soul in more detail than the Bible. There was already monotheism in the Roman Empire by the time Christianity arrived, but Plato's religion was elitist, reserved for the rich higher-ups. Christianity popularized Platonic monotheism; the Gentile converts to Christianity knew little about the Jewish traditions they were supposed to be succeeding, and so turned to what was more familiar to them: Greek Philosophy. Early theologians thought Socrates et al were precursors of Jesus, sent by God to prepare the gentiles for Christianity. Paul, in his letters, and Socrates, in his dialogues, seem to echo each other - Judah had been conquered by the Greeks, who had attempted to Hellenize their culture. The Romans, who had adopted Greek culture as their own, continued to spread its ideas and myths to the Jews. Paul was a well-educated 1st century Jew.

Early and Medieval Christianity expanded on the Jesus myth with a range of apocryphal gospels and 'expanded universe' stories. On Holy Saturday, after his death but before Resurrection, Jesus descended into Hell to rescue the righteous who lived and died before him (they would have been automatically ineligible for salvation) - confronting, overpowering, and therefore enraging Satan in the process, leaving him more resolved to make the sinners suffer, taking his anger out on them. Before Dante, there were a bunch of other 'tours of the afterlife' narratives which are almost short prototypes for the Divine Comedy.

Scholastic theologians, Thomas Aquinas chief among them, spent a long time thinking about angels and demons. Aquinas was a massive influence on Dante; Aristotle was a massive influence on Aquinas. More Greek philosophy, merged with Christianity over a millennium after the crucifixion, re-introduced to Europe by way of Arabic translations of the original Greek re-translated into Latin. Christianity becomes not just Platonic monotheism repackaged, but Aristotelian theology re-interpreted with biblical images.

The Prophet Muhammad turns up in Dante's Inferno. Arabic translations had brought Aristotle back to Europe. By Dante's time, there were at least two (known) Latin translations of the Qur'an. It is not, therefore, impossible that Dante was inspired by the Qur'an's many, many, many descriptions of a fiery tortuous afterlife for sinners.

Inventing Hell's overview of these Hellish sources of inspiration is enjoyable, fast-paced, and actually quite fun. Sweeney's writing style is chatty and easy-reading, and the jokes are not cringeworthy. The book is, however, obviously very simplified for a popular audience, and felt a little too short. It is not a work of scholarship, but as an introduction or a refresher, it is really very good. I would have been quite happy if it was a bit longer, with more details on the sources, the philosophy, the myths, the 'expanded universe' stories, etc. 

The final chapter, in which Sweeney explains why he doesn't like Dante and hopes Hell will become less important to the Christianity of the future, felt like a rushed conclusion. The author is too eager to distance the Bible and Christianity from Hell, minimizing the fact that, despite the manifold extra-biblical influences on the idea of Hell, a punishing afterlife is still part of the New Testament. If you were able to remove the legacy of Dante and the Medieval Hell from Christianity, the fires of torment are still there. Sweeney comes across as in denial about the Bible's contents, wanting to push the aspects of Christianity he dislikes onto Dante.

"Ultimately, I choose not Dante's vengeful, predatory God who is anxious to tally faults, to reward and to punish. Instead I choose the God who creates and sustains us, who is incarnate and wants to be among us, and the God who inspires and comforts us. That God is the real one, the one I have come to know and understand, and that God has nothing to do with the medieval Hell."

This sounds nice, but ignores the vengeful, predatory God of the Old Testament (see Leviticus chapter 26 for one example of many), who obviously doesn't originate with Dante. It ignores Jesus' God, who will throw the goats into the fire, will burn the chaff of humanity in a big bonfire. It ignores the God of the epistles, who will do similar. It ignores the Jesus of Revelation, who will slaughter his way across the Earth, crushing people in 'the great winepress of the wrath of God', etc. Yes, Dante's sadistic afterlife isn't very nice, and the God who oversaw it wouldn't be very nice, but if you could strip Greek myth and philosophy from Medieval Christianity, leaving only the biblical influences, you'd still have a vengeful and capricious God. Sweeney comes across as someone who wants to be Christian because they've always been one, but, now they've matured, they don't want to be associated with all the crueler, sinister aspects of the Christian and Biblical traditions, so shift the blame for that onto something - in this case, Dante and his Greek influences - which they feel they can reject while leaving their faith broadly intact. It's an amusing, but unconvincing, display of mental gymnastics.

In conclusion: this book is good for its quick summary of the evolution of Hell, but unconvincing in the author's goal of distancing Hell from the Bible and Christianity.

Magic Is Bad

"You shall not permit a sorceress to live" - Exodus 22:18

“A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death." - Leviticus 20:27

Those lines from the Bible make it quite clear that Magic is Bad, and were the basis for Europe's witch hunting craze during the 15th to 18th centuries. The Islamic ruling on magic is equally clear, and comes from the Hadith (the Qur'an's expanded universe):

"The prescribed punishment for the magician is that he be executed by the sword."

Islam, like Christianity, affirms the existence of magic and assigns it to evil forces. Christianity assigns it to demons and Satan (the Devil). Islam assigns it to evil jinn and Iblis (the Devil). In Islam, 'satan' is not the name or title of a single Devil; it can be applied to any human or jinn who is opposed to Islam and Allah. This is slightly similar to an early Hebrew tradition in which the word 'satan' (adversary) was applied to any angel or servant whom God sent to oppose or tempt someone (to be their adversary) - there are examples of this usage in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. These 'satans' are loyal servants of God, doing his bidding, and were eventually merged together into the single Jewish Satan (The Adversary) from the Book of Job, who is still a loyal servant of God. The 'satan' jinn of Islam are against God, but since God controls everything, they're also doing exactly what he wants? Islam is particularly irritating because it doesn't seem to have anything resembling a coherent mythology, because Muhammad was an illiterate merchant who only knew bits of Jewish and Christian lore, which he slammed inconsistently together, sprinkling some Arabian folklore on top.

Umar, the second Caliph of Islam (634CE - 644CE), asked his soldiers to kill every fortuneteller and magician they found during their campaigns against the Persian and Byzantine empires. However, later Caliphs were more relaxed, so it was down to the hardcore Muslims to remind everyone how to deal with magicians. During the reign of Al-Walid I, a magician was present at the caliph's court. He wowed the audience by severing a man's head then re-attaching it to his body: the audience cheered and yelled, "OMFG! He can raise the dead!"

But one audience member wasn't impressed. He went to the next show with a sword strapped to his back. (No security searches back then.) As the the show began, the Good Muslim charged through the crowd, sword drawn, and chopped the magicians head off.

Turning to the shocked crowd, the Good Muslim yelled, "If he can really raise the dead, let him raise himself!"

The Good Muslim was arrested and imprisoned.

Bilal Philips

Having done a bit more research into the author of my current Islam book, I discover that he holds fairly extreme views. I bought it in an Islamic Bookshop in Nottingham, so expected it to be fairly mainstream. Yes, the author is a Sunni Muslim, who make up 80% of Muslims. But he is a Hanbali Sunni Muslim, who make up 15% of Muslims. And he is a Salafi Hanbali Sunni Muslim, who make up an even smaller proportion of Muslims. His views are fundamentalist and extreme, which have caused him to be banned from entering several countries (including the UK), although his views are mainstream in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Since Jihadi Islam (Al-Qaeda, ISIS, etc) is the most extreme branch of Salafi Islam, we could consider this author's views a sort-of 'moderate ISIS': he obviously shares a lot of their beliefs, but isn't quite THAT crazy. He has apparently denounced ISIS and received death threats from them.

Keep all that in mind when thinking about my most recent Islam posts, and any more I write based on his book. I feel I should re-iterate something I said in the first post of this new series:

'Since the Qur'an is a very tedious and self-contradictory book, it doesn't give you a very clear idea of Islamic belief, which meant that generations of Muhammad's successors have had to perform arduous exegesis to figure out what God was supposedly going on about... this means that it's very easy to create-your-own Islam to suit your existing prejudices and ideas, hence there are a billion interpretations of what Islam means.'

To give you some idea of the various branches of Islam, here's a handy diagram: 

God's Awesome Oneness

Following on from my last post (about Allah summoning to Eden every human being who has ever existed or ever will exist, in order to clarify with them that he alone is their God), Muslims believe that the Islam is the natural way humans are supposed to live: any deviations from the natural Islamic way of life are caused by the environment. If children are left alone, they grow up being good Muslims believing in Allah (obviously, no studies are cited to back up this assertion). A child is not born a blank slate, but an Islamic slate (geddit?). The natural Islamic way of life is called the 'Fitrah'. As a child grows up, environmental pressures - friends, parents, government, jinn, etc - lead them astray, turning them into Christians, Jews, Communists, etc.

'There is no god but God.' Islam is very big on the oneness and almightyness of God. It's extremely easy to blaspheme in Islam, if we're taking my book's stance as fairly orthodox. Here are some beliefs that go against the Islamic belief in God's awesome oneness:

Free will. Allah has complete control over the universe. Nothing happens without his will. Everything is under his control. (Since belief in free will is affirmed two chapters later, because otherwise the afterlife Reward vs Punishment thing would be utterly stupid, perhaps a denial of free will is also blasphemous?)

Associating other gods with Allah. Polytheism and dualism are bad. Christianity is bad because it divides God into three persons: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, united in substance. No: God is one. Deifying humans is also, obvs, a no-no: Muslims believe Jesus was a human prophet whose teaching was warped over time, resulting in Christianity.

Denying God's existence. Since my book is authored by a Sunni Muslim who disapproves of Sufi Islam, mystical theology - all is Allah, Allah is all - is also in this category: denying God's separateness from the rest of reality is as bad as denying him altogether.

Humanizing God. Allah cannot be depicted in human or animal form. Allah is so beyond such imagery that, by depicting 'him' this way, you are implying a limitation of him: this is the beginnings of idolatry. Sistine Chapel bad.

The belief that energy can neither be created or destroyed is blasphemous, because Allah created everything and can destroy everything whenever he jolly well likes.

Praying to something, or someone, other than God. Allah has complete control over creation: all prayers should be directed to him. Praying to something, or someone, else implies that you believe that thing or person has powers over creation to rival Allah's. Don't pray to Muhammad. Don't pray to saints. Don't pray to angels. Likewise, belief in omens and charms, lucky and unlucky, are offensive to God, because they imply that the material thing (rabbit's foot, 4-leaf clover, broken mirror, etc) has powers over creation to rival Allah's total control. Fortunetelling of any kind is bad, because only Allah knows and controls the future: reading your horoscope is offensive to God.

God is one. God is all-powerful. Free will doesn't exist but also does. Only God knows the future. God is utterly transcendent and beyond our comprehension. Everyone with me so far?

Islamic Incoherence

A perfect example of how incoherent Islamic theology is: in chapter 1 of 'The Fundamentals of Tawheed (Islamic Monotheism)', I learned that belief in free will is blasphemous, because this belief goes against the idea that Allah has complete control over his creation (and the Qur'an verses which attest this); in chapter 3, I learn that if humanity doesn't have free will, then the whole reward and punishment thing is, obviously, pointless, therefore humans have free will, otherwise this religion doesn't make sense. Presumably this book went through multiple drafts. Presumably people proofread it. Doublethink at its finest.

Like early Christianity, Islam believes in bodily resurrection on Judgement Day, rather than the immediate post-mortem transition to Heaven or Hell envisioned by modern Christianity. When someone dies, their body disintegrates and their soul is put in a suspended state called 'Barzakh': the soul is frozen, oblivious, until Judgement Day, when the body is rebuilt and the soul has to confront its life choices, with their resultant reward or punishment. From the soul's perspective, it is an immediate transition to Judgement Day: suspended souls to do not perceive time, like one in a deep sleep.

Christianity, over the centuries, came up with a few explanations for what happened to people who died before Jesus, people who lived too early to share in the salvation he brought. They had to be in Hell. Some Christians just accepted this in an uncaring 'oh well, tough for them, lucky me being born when and where I was!' way. Others developed the idea of the 'Harrowing of Hell', which is alluded to in the New Testament: Jesus' descent into Hell after the crucifixion. In some interpretations, he smashed his way through Hell to rescue the old prophets and preach to the righteous, saving as many as he could and leading them to Heaven. In the 4th century Gospel of Nicodemus, Jesus conquers Hell and turns it from Satan's Kingdom into Satan's Prison. In Dante's Inferno, the two poets pass some ruined sections of Hell laid waste during Jesus' assault on the underworld (I imagined this as a sort-of holy equivalent of the Dead Scar in Quel'thalas from the Warcraft games).

Muhammad got in early so no speculations on this subject would be necessary, and also covered what would happen to people from different cultures who didn't know anything about Islam and God's rules. Obviously, he's already established that free will doesn't exist but also does, so don't expect anything too profound:

Shortly after creating Adam, the first man, God extracted from Adam's loins all of the future generations of humanity. He laid these out in front him, and spoke to them all face-to-face, saying:

"Am I not your Lord?"

And every single human who has ever existed or ever will exist replied: "Yes, we testify to it."

God then explained why he decided to have this meeting:

"That was in case you (mankind) should say on the Day of Resurrection, 'Surely we were unaware of all this. We had no idea that You, Allah, were our God. No one told us we were supposed to worship you alone."

Presumably, God then wiped all their memories so he could surprise them on Judgement Day, then shoved everyone back into Adam's testicles.

Islamic Determinism

Welcome to a new series of 'Mike Learns About Islam and Writes About It So You Can Learn Too' (working title). I'm currently reading up on the fundamentals of Sunni Islamic Monotheism. Since the Qur'an is a very tedious and self-contradictory book, it doesn't give you a very clear idea of Islamic belief, which meant that generations of Muhammad's successors have had to perform arduous exegesis to figure out what God was supposedly going on about. Some Muslims say that this is part of the text's holiness: God speaks, through the Qur'an, differently to each person. However, this means that it's very easy to create-your-own Islam to suit your existing prejudices and ideas, hence there are a billion interpretations of what Islam means. There are only two beliefs unifying all Muslims: (a) there is one god, Allah, and (b) Muhammad was his prophet. To quote one author: '[Muhammad] left serious theological difficulties to his more reflective successors'.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let's learn about one Sunni Muslim's interpretation of Islam. He's got a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D in Islamic theology and has been a university professor in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, and the book is apparently quite popular in Muslim communities, so we can assume his interpretation is fairly orthodox.

One of the things brought up in the first chapter is a heresy that has re-emerged again and again in Islamic culture throughout history. It's something that people really like to believe in. It's very important in many branches of Christianity.

Free will.

In Christianity, free will is often used as part of the explanation for the existence of evil in a cosmos created by a good God: true free will entails the ability to choose evil over good; freely-chosen good is greater than forced good, the existence of evil is a price worth paying (Benjamin Franklyn: 'They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety').

None of that in Islam. God created everything and predetermined everything. Which means that God created (a lot of) people with the intention of making them suffer because they did what he decided they would do, giving them no choice in the matter.

Some Qur'an verses against free will:

'Allah created you and whatever you do.' 

'It was not you who threw when you threw, but it was Allah who threw.'

'No calamity strikes except by Allah's permission'

'If the whole of mankind gathered together in order to do something to help you, they would only be able to do something for you which Allah had already written.'

'Had I wished, I could have granted each soul its right guidance. But My decree is binding: I shall fill Hell with both jinn and humans.'

'You did not slay them; it was Allah who slew them.'

An Islamic Bookshop

Today I went for a wander around one of the more multicultural areas of Nottingham. Not understanding the languages of overheard conversations, shop signs and products made me feel like a tourist going 'Ooooo! Look at all the foreign things!' It was like a mini holiday. Among the strange products I found ELDERFLOWER AND LEMON FANTA (see photo).

I found an Islamic Bookshop, which had a whole bookcase devoted to various editions of the Qur'an with different levels of prettiness and ostentation. I did wonder before going in whether all Qur'ans would be on top shelves, but I guess that only applies when the bookcase has more than just Qur'ans on it.

I browsed around: some of the sillier books were those with titles such as Hell & Its Denizens and The Inhabitants of Hell, which contained a lot of the usual fire and brimstone stuff common to religions with a damnation vs paradise afterlife dichotomy, but with a bit more casual sexism than you would get in a modern Christian work (while the Bible is horribly sexist, far more than the Qur'an in my opinion, Christianity has moved on quite a bit from it - women are allowed to speak in churches, for example): the author of one of these books quoted an ancient Muslim who had a vision of the queues for entering Heaven and Hell (waiting to get their Spiritual Passports stamped at the border crossing), remarking that there were far more women in the Hell queue because <old fashioned sexism>.

There was an extremely colourful book titled ONLY LOVE CAN DEFEAT TERRORISM.

I just had to buy A Concise Encyclopedia of Jinn. Islamic mythology features 3 intelligent species: angels, who God made from light; humans, who God made from clay; and Jinn, who God made from fire. Islamic angels do not have free will: they serve and obey God automatically. Humans and Jinn do have free will; Satan is a Jinn in Islamic mythology. Muhammad, as recorded in the Qur'an, preached to both humans and Jinn, invisible fire people. This fact is not mentioned often enough.

The book explains everything we 'know' about Jinn, using the Qur'an and Hadith (the secondary Muslim text) as main sources, and contains a lot of amusing speculation. Since Muhammad was the final prophet, who spoke to both Jinn and humans, and he implies that Jinn had prophets before him, the book concludes that Jinn culture probably has its own series of prophets leading up to Muhammad, but obviously we don't know anything about these invisible-fire-person prophets.

Jinn eat and drink. And fart. One story from the Hadith says that Satan times his farts to cover up the call to prayer. (I had to check the citation online: this is actually in the Hadith.)

Mythology be craycray.

Holy Trilogy: Conclusion

I have finished reading the Holy Trilogy (Hebrew Bible; New Testament; Qur'an). Achievement Unlocked!

It has taken me slightly less than a year, and during that time I have been figuring out where I stand on religious matters. This seems a good time to stop binge-reading books about religion and summarise the current state of my opinions.

I am, in a sense, deeply religious. I am addicted to the mystical experience, the feeling of being one with the universe in all its complexity and majesty, of 'lying on the bosom of the infinite world'*, and seeing everything aflame with radiance and significance. Throughout human history, this experience has variously been interpreted as a connection to the gods, God, Nirvana, Dao, etc. In the ancient world, I might have been a priest, a prophet, or a monk. Alas, modernity has saved me from that fate.

Having come from a science (and science fiction) background, traditional religious imagery is extremely unsatisfying. The 'miracles' are often underwhelming; the cosmologies are crass and tacky. While reading the Holy Trilogy, I was constantly reminded of Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars:

'Throughout the earlier part of its history, the human race had brought forth an endless succession of prophets, seers, messiahs, and evangelists who convinced themselves and their followers that to them alone were the secrets of the universe revealed. Some of them succeeded in establishing religions which survived for many generations and influenced billions of men; others were forgotten even before their deaths.

The rise of science, which with monotonous regularity refuted the cosmologies of the prophets and produced miracles which they could never match, eventually destroyed all these faiths. It did not destroy the awe, nor the reverence and humility, which all intelligent beings felt as they contemplated the stupendous universe in which they found themselves. What it did weaken, and finally obliterate, were the countless religions each of which claimed with unbelievable arrogance, that it was the sole repository of the truth and that its millions of rivals and predecessors were all mistaken.'

I have grown quite fond of some branches of theology, but their 'God' is so different to the usual view that, to avoid confusion, I would prefer not to use the word 'God'. Most people have never heard of Paul Tillich, let alone Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Sometimes I think of myself as an 'independent mystic'.

'God' is usually imagined as a divine tyrant, 'Heaven's awful monarch'**, who watches everything, wiretaps your thoughts, rewards those who think how he wants and do what he wants, punishes those who do not, and occasionally interferes with human history by helping out his homies or giving messages to arbitrarily chosen prophets who pass the message to the masses. The tyrant's earthly servants/slaves/sheep/flock do his bidding (whether good or evil), censor criticism, vilify doubters, and punish apostates with social exclusion or death.

This is a nightmarish idea. How would one choose any particular religion when they all claim divine inspiration, and their adherents all claim to Just Know? Am I to pick the religion as I was nominally raised in, and hope that since I was born into a first world country, I was also born into the One True Faith? What if I haven't passed the tyrant's test? What if I haven't been nice enough? What if the tyrant actually meant for his followers to obey all the awful stuff in the sacred text? What if I have been too nice?

It feels cheap to ridicule this idea, because it is so ridiculous.

I am happy to call myself a humanist. I believe that humans have the capacity to instil their lives with meaning and choose good over evil. I do not believe in an afterlife. I find writings about accepting death and the finitude of our existence more consoling and inspiring than any afterlife wankery. If there is an afterlife, it will be a pleasant surprise (unless the Wahhabi Muslims were right all along!), but I'm not getting my hopes up. Let's make the most of the one life we know we have.

Too much religion is characterised by dishonesty, dogmatism, and doublethink. There is so much awful stuff in the sacred texts. I have become, in a sense, deeply anti-religious. Perhaps we need a new synthesis, combining humanist values and reasoned enquiry with the best aspects of the traditional religions, to produce something which can, without hypocrisy, move with the times, doing away with the barbaric, the bigoted, and the bonkers.

*Friedrich Schleiermacher, 'On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers'
**Angel Gabriel, 'Paradise Lost', Book IV

Qur'an: Conclusion

I have finished reading the Qur'an. Achievement Unlocked!

Concluding Islam post. It was my intention that these posts presented a reasonably balanced view of Islam: I did not want to come across as either an Islamophile or Islamophobe.

I think it's fairly obvious that Muhammad was insane, but the Qur'an is nowhere near as barbaric or bigoted as I was expecting. As sacred texts go, the Qur'an is almost shockingly benign. It lacks the extreme barbarism of the Old Testament and the arrogant exclusivism of the New Testament.

The Qur'an advocates neither genocide nor genital mutilation. Violence is only to be used for defence; turning the other cheek isn't helpful when people are coming to kill your children. Muhammad does not say that Islam needs to be spread across the world (Mark 16:16, Matthew 28:19), that people of other faiths are withered branches to be gathered up and burned (John 15:6), or that he's been sent to fuck shit up (Matthew 10:34-36).

The Qur'an is, however, really boring. As a collection of speeches, there's very little development. The tone gets darker in his later speeches, as Muhammad went from street preacher to statesman to warlord, but overall it is tedious drivel. It is arguably the most moral and progressive of the 'Holy Trilogy' (Hebrew Bible; New Testament; Qur'an), but it is the least entertaining or inspiring. If we imagine God as the author of all three, I can't help but think that he'd ran out of ideas and only did the Qur'an to complete his book contract. I'm sure the Arabic poetry is lovely.

Like the Western world, the Muslim world is not monolithic: there are myriad sects and interpretations of Islam. It is unhelpful to think of our current situation as a war between Islam and the West. It is a civil war within Islam, between different extremist groups (Sunni vs Shia, Wahhabist vs everyone, Jihadist vs everyone), that now affects all of civilisation. This is not a clash of civilisations, but a clash for civilisation itself. We cannot afford to group all Muslims with the fundamentalists or the extremists; those of us who share common goals - peace, equality, justice, etc - must work together against the toxic branches of Islam that threaten us all.

It is often said that Islam, unlike Judaism or Christianity, has not had a reformation. Modernity has been thrust on Islam; the Islamic reformation is happening right now. Reformations always involve violence: certain groups will cling to the present or retreat to an idealised past rather than look to the future. During the Jewish reformation, Jerusalem was levelled and thousands of Jews were killed. The Christian reformation culminated in the Thirty Years War, one of the darkest periods in human history. We need to be on the side of reform, on the side of civilisation, in the struggle to come. Reform is a step towards secularism.

I conclude with the words of one of my personal heroes, Olaf Stapledon, writing in the 1930s, having survived the First World War and soon to see its sequel:

'The whole planet, the whole rock-grain, with its busy swarms, I now saw as an arena where two cosmical antagonists, two spirits, were already preparing for a critical struggle, already assuming terrestrial and local guise, and coming to grips in our half-awakened minds.
One antagonist appeared as the will to dare for the sake of the new, the longed for, the reasonable and joyful, world, in which every man and woman may have scope to live fully, and live in service of mankind. The other seemed essentially the myopic fear of the unknown; or was it more sinister? Was it the cunning will for private mastery, which fomented for its own ends the archaic, reason-hating, and vindictive, passion of the tribe.'

Qur'an: Muhammad vs Lucretius

The Angry Warlord Verses only lasted twenty pages, so Muhammad is back to his usual drivel: warning humans and invisible fire-spirits about the imminent apocalypse.

Imagine a series of 'Doctor Who' in which the Roman poet Lucretius (who died around 55 BCE) becomes one of the Doctor's companions, and they travel to 7th century Arabia. The Doctor goes off to investigate something and leaves Lucretius to have a wander. At length, he finds Muhammad doing some of his preaching. I expect the encounter would go something like this:

MUHAMMAD: O tribes of jinn and men, were you not visited by messengers from among you, narrating to you My revelations and warning you of arriving at a Day like this? Join the company of nations that passed before you, Jinn and humans, heading for the fire!

LUCRETIUS: If men saw that a term was set to their troubles, they would find strength in some way to withstand the hocus-pocus and intimidations of the prophets. As it is, they have no power of resistance, because they are haunted by the fear of eternal punishment after death. They know nothing of the nature of the spirit. Many a time before now men have betrayed their country and their beloved parents in an effort to escape the halls of Hell. This dread and darkness of the mind can only dispelled by an understanding of the outward form and inner workings of nature.

MUHAMMAD: Those who call lies to our revelations or are too proud to accept them - the gates of heaven shall not open before them. Thus do we requite evildoers. In hell they shall make their beds, above them are sheets of fire. Thus do We requite wrongdoers. They who fondly embrace this present life in preference to the hereafter, these are plunged in deep error.

LUCRETIUS: The mind, which we often call the intellect, is part of a man, no less than hand or foot or eye. There is also a vital spirit in our limbs. The mind and spirit are interconnected. The mind is the seat of intellect; the rest of the vital spirit, diffused throughout the body, obeys the mind and moves under its direction and impulse. Mind and spirit are both composed of matter. We see them propelling the limbs, rousing the body from sleep, changing the expression of the face and guiding and steering the whole man - activities that all clearly involve touch, and touch in turn involves matter.

MUHAMMAD: For those who do not believe in the hereafter, We have made their deeds appear attractive in their sight, so they stumble aimlessly in error. It is they whom an evil torment awaits, who shall be the greatest losers in the hereafter.

LUCRETIUS: How can we deny their material nature? You see the mind sharing in the body's experiences and sympathising with it. The substance of the mind must be material, since it is affected by the impact of material weapons. Furthermore, as the body suffers the horrors of disease and the pangs of pain, so we see the mind stabbed with anguish, grief and fear. What more natural than that it should likewise have a share in death? Since the mind is thus invaded by the contagion of disease, you must acknowledge that it is destructible, for pain and sickness are the artificers of death.

MUHAMMAD: The angel of death, entrusted with you, shall cause you to die and then to your Lord you shall be returned. If only you could see the sinners that Day, their heads bowed before their Lord. Had We wished, We could have granted each soul its right guidance. But My decree is binding: I shall fill Hell with both jinn and humans.

LUCRETIUS: Conversely, we see that the mind, like a sick body, can be healed and directed by medicine. This too is presage that life is mortal. When you embark on an attempt to alter the mind or to direct any other natural object, it is fair to suppose that you are adding certain parts or transposing them or subtracting some trifle at any rate from their sum. But an immortal object will not let its parts be rearranged or added to, or the least bit drop off. For, if ever anything is so transformed as to overstep its own limits, this means the immediate death of what was before. By this susceptibility both to sickness and to medicine, the mind displays marks of mortality. So false reasoning is plainly confronted by true fact.

MUHAMMAD: As for those who argue about the revelations of God, no authority having come to them - there is nothing in their hearts save a pride which they can never satisfy. Seek refuge in God.

LUCRETIUS: Mind and body as a living force derive their vigour and vitality from their conjunction. Without body, the mind alone cannot perform the vital motions. Bereft of spirit, the body cannot persist and exercise its senses. As the eye uprooted and separated from the body cannot see, so we perceive that the spirit and mind by themselves are powerless. It is only because their atoms are held in by the whole body, intermingled through veins and flesh, sinews and bones, that they are kept together so as to perform the motions that generate sentience.

MUHAMMAD: A Day shall come when the enemies of God shall be herded into the Fire, all held in tight order. We shall force the blasphemers to taste a grievous torment, and shall requite them for the worst of their deeds. Such shall be the reward of God's enemies: the Fire, which to them shall be the Abode of Eternity, as a reward for repudiating Our revelations. Those who argue against Our revelations know there is no escape for them. For all that you have been granted is but a fleeting enjoyment in this present life, but what is with God is better and more lasting.

LUCRETIUS: No one on the point of death seems to feel his spirit retiring intact right out of his body. If our mind were indeed immortal, it would not complain of extinction in the hour of death, but would feel rather that it was escaping from confinement and sloughing off its garments like a snake. From all this it follows that death is nothing to us and no concern of ours, since our tenure of the mind is mortal. When we shall be no more - when the union of body and spirit that engenders us has been disrupted - to us, who shall then be nothing, nothing by any hazard will happen any more at all.

MUHAMMAD: Those who disbelieve use false arguments in order to refute the truth. They have taken My verses, and the warnings they received, as a laughing matter. Your Lord, All-Forgiving, Abounding in mercy - were He to hold them to account for what they earned, He would hasten torment upon them!

LUCRETIUS: If the future holds travail and anguish in store, the self must be in existence, when that time comes, in order to experience it. But from this fate we are redeemed by death, which denies existence to the self that might have suffered these tribulations. Rest assured, therefore, that we have nothing to fear in death. One who no longer is cannot suffer, or differ in any way from one who has never been born, when once this mortal life is ended. In sleep, when mind and body alike are at rest, no one misses himself or sighs for life. If such sleep were prolonged to eternity, no longing for ourselves would trouble us. Death, therefore, must be regarded, so far as we are concerned, as having much less existence than sleep, if anything can have less existence than what we perceive to be nothing.

MUHAMMAD: The unbelievers shall be herded into Hell, in order that God may be distinguish the depraved from the pure. He shall heap the depraved one upon the other, piling them all up, and deliver that pile to Hell. These are truly the losers.

LUCRETIUS: The old is always thrust aside to make way for the new, and one thing must be built out of the wreck of another. There is no murky pit of Hell awaiting anyone. There is need of matter, so that later generations may arise; when they have lived out their span, they will follow you. Bygone generations have taken your road, and those to come will take it no less. So one thing will never cease to spring from another. To none is life given in freehold; to all on lease. Look back at the eternity that passed before we were born, and mark how utterly it counts to us as nothing. This is a mirror that Nature holds up to us, in which we may see the time that shall be after we are dead. Is there anything terrifying in the sight - anything depressing - anything that is not more restful than the soundest sleep?

MUHAMMAD: Fight those who do not believe in God or the Last Day, who do not hold illicit what God and His Messenger hold illicit, and who do not follow the religion of truth from among those given the Book, until they offer up tribute, by hand, in humble mien. Fight them so that there will be no discord and the whole of religion belongs to God.

LUCRETIUS: Often it is religion that is the mother of sinful and impious deeds. At Aulis, the altar of the Virgin Goddess was foully stained with the blood of an innocent girl, slaughtered so that a fleet might sail under happy auspices. Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by religion.

MUHAMMAD: You are never to pray over any of them who dies, nor stand over his grave, for they disbelieved in God and His Messenger, and died as sinners. They are indeed a pollution; their final place of rest is Hell, in recompense for what they earned. You did not slay them; it was God who slew them.

(THE DOCTOR enters)

DOCTOR: Luc, we've got to get back to the TARDIS. Some Pyroviles survived the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and hid away in Arabia. They've been planning something terrible, experimenting on human minds, but I don't know what. They're all wearing invisibility cloaks; we don't know where they are.
(turning to Muhammad)
Who's this guy?

LUCRETIUS: A crazy prophet going on about the end of the world, people being gathered up and burned. I was just explaining to him about the mind and spirit; what was it you called them?

DOCTOR: Brain and nervous system.

LUCRETIUS: Yeah, he didn't seem very impressed.

DOCTOR: That's it! The Pyroviles are going to burn up the planet and take whoever they can as willing slaves! Back to the TARDIS, now!

(THE DOCTOR and LUCRETIUS exit; slowly zoom in on Muhammad's face.)

MUHAMMAD: When the earth quakes - a shattering quake!
When the sky disintegrates,
When the earth is crushed, pounded, pulverised,
When the stars are strewn,
When heaven shall be opened,
When hell-fire is kindled,
When the earth is distended,
When the stars are erased,
When the mountains are obliterated
When the seas are made to erupt,
When the Trumpet is blown
When the great Cataclysm overwhelms,
To your Lord that Day is the journey's end.
On this Day the faithful are laughing at the unbelievers,
Upon couches, watching.

(cut to TO BE CONTINUED; credits roll)

Qur'an: Angry Warlord Verses

I'm now back on the Qur'an, a book so underwhelming that, Muhammad assures me, it is definitely not the product of human imagination and creativity:

'It is not possible that this Qur'an is forged by other than God.'

I've now reached the Angry Warlord Verses, which are a bit nasty, and could be summed up as:

Going to War = Going to Heaven
Conscientious Objection = Eternal Damnation

Here are some of the nasty bits:

'Fight them and God will punish them at your hands. Fight the polytheists, all of them, as they fight you all, and know that God stands with the pious. Once the sacred months are shorn, kill the polytheists wherever you find them, arrest them, imprison them, besiege them, and lie in wait for them at every site of ambush. Fight the unbelievers near you, and let them find you harsh, and know that God stands with the pious.

Fight those who do not believe in God or the Last Day, who do not hold illicit what God and His Messenger hold illicit, and who do not follow the religion of truth from among those given the Book, until them offer up tribute, by hand, in humble mien. Fight them so that there will be no discord and the whole of religion belongs to God.

If you do not march forth, He will punish you most painfully. March forth, then, whether light or heavy in armour. Labour hard in the cause of God, with your property and persons; this is best for you, if only you knew. When you meet the unbelievers in combat, turn not your backs to them. Whoso turns his back upon that day, except to retreat and re-attack, or to join another troop, suffers the burden of God's anger and his refuge is hell - a wretched fate indeed.

You are never to pray over any of them who dies, nor stand over his grave, for they disbelieved in God and His Messenger, and died as sinners. They are indeed a pollution; their final place of rest is Hell, in recompense for what they earned. You did not slay them; it was God who slew them.
It is not right for the Prophet and the believers to ask forgiveness for polytheists, even if they are relatives, once it has become clear to them that they are denizens of hell. They swear to you to forgive them but even if you do, God will not forgive the corrupt. A painful punishment awaits them. Whether you ask forgiveness for them or whether you do not, were you to ask forgiveness for them seventy times, God would not forgive them.

God has purchased from the believers their souls and their wealth and, in exchange, Paradise shall be theirs. They fight in the cause of God, they kill and are killed - a true promise from Him in the Torah, the Evangel and the Qur'an. He gives life and He deals death; apart from God, you have neither friend nor champion.

The unbelievers shall be herded into Hell, in order that God may be distinguish the depraved from the pure. He shall heap the depraved one upon the other, piling them all up, and deliver that pile to Hell. These are truly the losers.

The worst of creatures in God's sight are the unbelievers for they have no faith. When you meet them in battle, scatter them utterly as a lesson to those coming after them - perhaps they will reflect. Prepare against them whatever force and war cavalry you can gather to frighten the enemy of God. Whatever you expend in the cause of God will be returned to you in full.'

Etc. It's easy to focus on these verses because the rest of the Qur'an is just so fucking dull. To reach these I've passed through over 375 pages of 'Stock up on good deeds because the world is gonna end any day now. Don't convert people to Islam: if they're are being nice, leave them to whatever they believe, God'll judge 'em on the Last Day'.

In Muhammad's view, going to war is a defensive act. If the polytheists or 'unbelievers' are threatening peace, slaughter them. If they're being nice, leave them to it. After he became ruler of Medina, the Muslim super-tribe started raiding other tribes to get food. (Raiding and trading were the two main ways of acquiring food in 7th century Arabia.) The Muslims were seen as traitors to their tribes because they had abandoned blood-ties for an ideology. Many of the Arab tribes decided to declare war against Medina and exterminate the Muslims.

It is worth remembering that the Arabic word usually translated into 'unbeliever' has no English equivalent; it roughly means 'those who are ungrateful to something (e.g. life) given with great kindness', not 'those who do not accept that our doctrines are true'.

Even amongst the Angry Warlord Verses, there are calmer, Let's All Be Friends Verses:

'Should they be inclined to peace, incline to it also, and put your trust in God.
So long as they deal fairly with you, you are to deal fairly with them. God loves the pious.
Tell the unbelievers: if they desist, past sins will be forgiven them. If they desist, God sees best what they do.
God is All-Forgiving, All-Pardoning, Compassionate to each.'

(Muhammad frequently describes God as 'All-Forgiving' or 'All-Pardoning', and then goes to on say that God will not forgive X, Y, or Z. I find this contradiction the most infuriating, but we should not expect consistency from an illiterate lunatic.)

Qur'an: Laws To Live By

Once ruler of Medina, Muhammad had to come up with some laws for everyone to live by, such as:

"The adulteress and the adulterer: flog each of them a hundred lashes. And let not pity for them overcome you in regard to the law of God."

And this shining beacon of 7th century Arabian morality:

"Do not force your female slaves into prostitution, if they desire chastity, in order to gain some advantage in the present world. If forced, God, once they are forced, is towards them All-Forgiving, Compassionate to each."

As ruler of Medina, he had a lot to deal with. But people kept trying to talk to him at meal times, and it was getting very distracting. That's one of the burdens of being a celebrity/prophet/warlord. Muhammad's best mate, God, the creator of all things, was able to help his buddy out:

"O believers, do not enter the chambers of the Prophet unless given leave, and do not wait around for it to be well cooked. Rather, if invited enter, and when fed disperse, not lingering for conversation. This behaviour irritates the Prophet, who is embarrassed to tell you, but God is not embarrassed by the truth."

While the tone has got a bit darker, the Qur'an hasn't got much more exciting. He's still going on about the imminent End of the World and the need to stock up on good deeds, and occasionally mentioning or retelling a biblical story. Most of these retellings are clunky and boring; the best so far features King Solomon - leading an army of humans, jinn, and talking birds - meeting a talking ant, in the aptly named Valley of Ants.

There's still been nothing about Islam being the One True Faith that everyone needs to convert to. Muhammad's very much a "if they're being nice, leave 'em to it" kind of guy:

"As for the believers, the Jews, the Sabeans, the Christians, the Zoroastrians and the polytheists - God shall judge between them on the Day of Resurrection. God is a witness of all things."

Only 260 pages to go! I have started speed-reading it, because "stock up on good deeds because the End of the World is gonna happen any day now" stopped being entertaining many pages ago.

Qur'an: No More Mr Nice Prophet

After about 180 pages of "stock up on good deeds because the world is gonna end any day now", the tone of the Qur'an changes very suddenly. After putting up with so much shit, Muhammad's (and God's) patience wore out: Muhammad picked up his shotgun and started singing:

"No more Mr Nice Prophet,
No more Mr Clean,
No more Mr Nice Prophet,
They say, he's sick, he's a false prophet"
(I may have embellished this slightly: he didn't actually have a shotgun.)

As Muhammad's following grew, the Muslims became increasingly unpopular. The leaders of the Quraysh tribe, Muhammad's own tribe, imposed a boycott on the Muslims. Everyone in Mecca was forbidden to trade with the them; nobody could sell them food. This ruined many of the Muslims' lives, and was partly responsible for the death of Khadija, Muhammad's wife. Slaves who had converted to Islam were killed.

Eight years after his first revelation, Muhammad was approached by emissaries from the city of Yathrib, 250 miles north of Mecca. Several tribes had given up the nomadic way of life to found Yathrib. Some of these tribes were Jewish, and their monotheist ideas were popular with the Arab tribes. However, the Yathrib tribes were often still at war with each other. The emissaries recognised Muhammad as God's prophet to the Arabs; they converted to Islam. Two years later, in 622 CE, the Muslims of Mecca migrated to Yathrib. This exodus marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar. The Muslims had turned their backs on tribal blood ties; a new era had begun.

Muhammad became ruler of Yathrib, which became known as Medina. His revelations became a lot more political: while he was not forcing everyone to convert to Islam, a lot of the Jews and pagans of Medina, who did not recognise him as a legit prophet, weren't too fond of him as their ruler. They just thought he was some random guy from Mecca, with voices in his head, who had suddenly been put in charge of their city. Luckily for Muhammad, the voice in his head (God, speaking through the Angel Gabriel) provided him with an effective solution to this problem:

"If the hypocrites, and the sick in heart, and those who spread panic in the city, do not desist, We will give you sway over them, and then they will no longer be your neighbours therein, except for a short while. Accursed shall they be; wherever they are found they shall be captured and killed outright. Such has been the precedent of God with those who came before, and you shall not find God's precedent to vary."

I have another 340 pages of the Qur'an, another ten years of Muhammad's life, still to go. Mecca and Medina will go to war; there will be betrayals, subterfuge, slaughter, sieges, raids, and, after all that, a peace offensive. Muhammad will end up ruler of all Arabia, the various tribes having sworn allegiance to the Muslim super-tribe.

Qur'an: Jesus

In the Hebrew Bible, God occasionally refers to himself using plural pronouns. This is a remnant of ye olde Israelite polytheism, when Yahweh was part of a pantheon. In the Qur'an, God - speaking through the Angel Gabriel, speaking through Muhammad - also occasionally refers to himself using plural pronouns, as well as third person and first person singular pronouns. Islam, being an Arabian reboot of Jewish Christianity, recognises Jesus and the Jewish prophets as legit messengers of God:

'We had sent Noah and Abraham and assigned prophecy and the Book to their progeny. Some are guided aright, but many of them are dissolute. Then, following them, We sent Our messengers, and followed them up with Jesus son of Mary, and granted him the Evangel. In the hearts of those who followed him We planted kindness and compassion; and also a monasticism which they invented but which We did not ordain for them except to seek the good pleasure of God. But they did not do it justice. Hence, We granted those among them who believed their reward, but many of them are dissolute.'

Jesus, in Islamic mythology, was still born from virgin Mary, but he was fully human. Mary produced him via miraculous parthenogenesis; God did not father him. His teaching, the Evangel, was lost and corrupted over time. God still thinks Christianity is cool though, as long as the Christians are being nice.

I have now read over 140 pages of the Qur'an and have still yet to encounter anything morally repugnant. In fact, there has been very little actual content. The main message is: '"End of the World is gonna happen any day now, so stock up on good deeds to make sure you go to eternal paradise not eternal damnation," says the Judeo-Christian God, who is the One True God.'

It's just been that, repeated, over and over again, sometimes with impressive dramatic language, sometimes alluding to various characters from Biblical mythology, sometimes mentioning Jinn (Islamic mythology features 3 intelligent species: Humans, which God made from clay; Angels, which God made from light; and Jinn, which God made from fire.). It's really quite boring. To put it most bluntly: it comes across as the ramblings of an illiterate merchant with voices in his head.

Qur'an: Early Days

Islam is like an Arabian reboot of Jewish Christianity, the branch of Christianity that considered Jesus a fully human Jewish prophet: neither semi-divine nor God in human form. There was a feeling amongst the 7th century Arabs that they had been left out of history; their monotheist neighbours worshipped only one god, had cosmopolitan cities and a rich culture. The Arabs were still worshipping a plethora of gods and had a very tribal culture; some tribes were nomadic, others had built primitive settlements, and the tribes were constantly at war with each other. The Arabian climate was not conducive to speedy social development; the Arabs lived on the brink of starvation.

The Quraysh tribe, based in Mecca, had become quite wealthy. Mecca was a sacred pilgrimage site to Arab pagans; every year they would gather around the Kabah, an ancient shrine housing a 'Rock from Paradise' (a meteorite), and worship the top god of the Arabian pantheon: Allah. Violence was forbidden in and around Mecca, which made it a great place to trade. The wealthy elite, corrupted by greed and material possessions, did not help the weaker members of society. This upset a lot of people, one of whom founded a major world religion.

In 610 C.E., a man from the Quraysh tribe, Muhammad ibn Abdallah, woke from his slumber and could not move. He felt a presence constricting him, and heard a voice speaking to him (Google 'sleep paralysis'). At first, Muhammad thought he was either insane or being tormented by a jinn (a desert spirit). But these experiences continued, so he confided to his wife and one of her cousins (who was a Jewish Christian). Both concluded that he was receiving messages from the Judeo-Christian God, who was also the top god of the Arabian pantheon. God had finally turned his attention to the Arabs; it was time for Arabian monotheism. Two years after his first revelation, Muhammad started to preach.

'He it is Who created the heavens and earth in six days, then sat firmly on the throne. He knows whatever passes into the earth and whatever comes out thereof, What comes down from heaven, and what ascends thereto; He is with you where you may be; He knows full well what you do. To Him belongs sovereignty of the heavens and earth, and to God all matters shall revert. He it is Who entwines night with day, and day with night, and knows full well what lies within hearts. He created man from thin clay, like earthenware, And created jinn from shimmering flame. Jinn and humans, if you can make your escape from the regions of the heavens and earth, escape! You shall not escape except by divine authority. The Imminent Event is at hand. And you laugh instead of weeping - lost in your frivolity? Bow to God and worship!'

There was a mixed response to Muhammad's anti-capitalist polemics and vivid descriptions of the Imminent Judgement Day Which Is Gonna Happen Any Day Now. He slowly gathered followers, but most people in Mecca just thought he had been out in the sun too long. Twenty-years later, Muhammad ruled Arabia.

Qur'an: So Far, So Benign

I have now read over 80 pages of the Qur'an and have yet to encounter anything morally repugnant. This is surprising, both because of an unconscious Islamophobic bias which led me to expect the Qur'an to be awful, and because of how this compares to my reading of the Bible. Less than ten pages into my readings of either the 'Old' or 'New' testaments, I started to find the text abhorrent and this repulsion only increased as I kept reading. The nice verses are nice, but the bad verses are bad.

The Christian revolution was in many ways a moral step forwards, and in many other ways a moral step backwards. The early Christians laid the foundations for many of the values which Western civilisation takes for granted. But they also introduced new, and exacerbated existing, prejudices. We are still fighting these biblical bigotries which have, perhaps irreparably, scarred our culture.

In the shithole of 7th century Arabia, Islam was a massive step forwards. So far, Muhammad has just been going about the coming apocalypse and the need to be a nice person.

'The freeing of a slave, Or feeding, in time of famine, An orphan near in kin, Or a poor man, dirt-poor. Enjoin patience on one another, Enjoin mercy on one another, Whatever good works you lay in store for yourselves you shall find something better with God, and greater in reward. So be pious before God as best you can, and listen and obey, and expend in charity for your own sake!'

Etc. Just nice things. He also teaches, as I quoted in a previous post, not to proselytise and convert people to Islam. Even the stuff about 'unbelievers' being eternally punished and having a really bad time on Judgement Day is just a problem of translation.

The Arabic word usually translated into either 'infidel' or 'unbeliever' has no equivalent English word: it roughly means 'those who are blatantly ungrateful towards something given with great kindness' i.e. people who, in response to being given the gift of life, are selfish, prideful and arrogant. It is not simply referring to all non-Muslims. I find it useful to replace 'unbeliever' with 'dickhead':

'That Day, mankind will come out in scattered throngs, To be shown their rights and wrongs, Whoso has done an atom's worth of good shall see it; Whose has done an atom's worth of evil shall see it.
When the Trumpet is blown, That shall be a day grievous to the dickheads, A Day of no ease.
When they see it coming near, the faces of the dickheads will grow sorrowful, and it shall be said: 'This is what you asked for.''

Maybe I've jinxed it. Maybe tonight I'll read about how God wants all kittens mutilated. But so far, it's been a pleasant read.

Qur'an: Introduction

Having read about a third of the Old Testament, and about half of the New Testament, I've decided to take a break from the Bible to read the Qur'an and learn about Islam for a bit. Being a collection of stuff that Muhammad said (or, stuff that was revealed to Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel) at different times over a twenty year period, the Qur'an doesn't lend itself well to summary. I'll share a few excerpts with a little bit of history so we can all learn about Islam together. Like with the New Testament, I've decided to read the Qur'an in an approximate chronological order to see how Muhammad's views/revelations developed over his life.

Arabia, in Muhammad's day, was a place of many religions. Muhammad's imagination combined elements from Arabian polytheism with bits of Jewish and Christian lore to create a new mythology. Central to this mythology is the oneness of God; Muhammad thought polytheism was obviously rubbish, and considered the Christian doctrine of the Trinity to be nonsense:

'Say: "He is God, Unique,
God, Lord Supreme!
Neither begetting nor begotten,
And none can be His peer."

Despite what we might expect from the media's portrayal of Islam, the Qur'an is not that big on preaching, proselytising and winning over converts:

'Say: "O unbelievers! I do not worship what you worship,
Nor do you worship what I worship;
Nor will I ever worship what you worship,
Nor will you ever worship what I worship.
You have your religion,
And I have mine.'

Qur'an: Poetry

The Qur'an is very different to the Bible. It is not an anthology of books, letters or stories, but a collection of speeches. Each chapter, called a 'sura' (plural: suwar), is a transcript of one of Muhammad's speeches/revelations. They are very varied in length.

The beautiful poetry of the Arabic is lost in translation; Muslims insist that the Qur'an is only the Qur'an in the Arabic original. Reciting the Arabic is, according to common Muslim opinion, capable of causing tears of repentance and comfort, or a shiver of fear and trembling. Partly because of this language problem, Muslims actively discouraged converting non-Arabs to Islam for the first 100 years after Muhammad's death. Islam was seen as the religion for Arabs; God had used other prophets to instruct non-Arabs.

At the beginning of his time as prophet, Muhammad's revelations were very simple. He was, like many prophets and messiahs before and after him, telling people to be nice and warning them about the impending apocalypse. He had been born into a rich tribe, and his wife was a very successful merchant, but he was affected by the financial inequality he saw in Arabia, and so was God:

'He who amasses wealth, forever counting it,
Imagining his wealth will immortalize him!
He shall be tossed into the Consumer,
But how can you know what is the Consumer?
The flaming Fire of God!'

'You do not honour the orphan,
Nor urge one another to feed the poor.
You consume an inheritance to the last mouthful,
And you love wealth with a love inordinate.'

There is a lot of apocalypse-talk. The following is an amalgam of verses from different chapters:

'When the earth quakes - a shattering quake!
When the sky disintegrates,
That Day, mankind will come out in scattered throngs,
To be shown their rights and wrongs.

When the earth is crushed, pounded, pulverised,
When the stars are strewn,
Your Lord and the angels arrive, row after row,
And hell that Day is brought in tow

When heaven shall be opened
When hell-fire is kindled
Man that Day shall be informed
Of all his works, from first to last.

When the earth is distended,
When the stars are erased,
On that Day, some faces shall be resplendent,
To their Lord their eyes are lifted.

When the mountains are obliterated
When the seas are made to erupt,
On that Day, some faces shall be snarling,
Knowing a back-breaker shall befall them.

When the Trumpet is blown
When the great Cataclysm overwhelms,
To your Lord that Day is the journey's end.
On this Day the faithful are laughing at the unbelievers,
Upon couches, watching.'

Qur'an: Humans, Angels, and Jinn

Jewish Angels do not have free will. In Judaism, Satan is a servant of God who carries out divinely-authorised evil acts to tempt and troll humanity, because the Hebrew God is a capricious tyrant who does whatever he wants and answers to no one (and if you don't worship him, he'll beat you up on a biblical scale).

Christian Angels do have free will. In Christianity, Satan is an angel who rebelled against God's tyrannical rule, either before or after the creation of man, and now tempts and trolls humanity in direct opposition to the will of the benevolent Christian God, who, being omnipotent, is perfectly capable of destroying Satan (which he'll get round to doing on Judgement Day, any day now).
Muhammad was vaguely aware of both these traditions, which he combined with some Arabian folklore to produce a more convoluted explanation for evil.

Islamic Angels do not have free will, but jinn (desert spirits from Arabian folklore) do have free will. Before creating humans, God created angels out of light and jinn out of fire. After God created man, he commanded the angels and the jinn to bow before Adam.

Iblis, one of the jinn, refused. He said, "I am better than him; You created me of fire, but him You created out of clay."
At which point, God effectively told Iblis to fuck off and be cursed forever.
But Iblis begged for his punishment to be deferred until after Judgement Day.
"You shall be deferred until that well-known moment," said God.
"I swear by Your Might, I shall seduce them all!" declared Iblis.
"In truth, in very truth, I say to you: I shall fill Hell to the brim with you and all who follow you of their number."

Iblis was given the title 'Satan' and has been tempting and trolling humanity in opposition to the will of the benevolent Muslim God ever since.

But not all jinn are bad; jinn have free will just like humans. Muhammad addresses both humans and jinn in his speeches. Both humans and jinn need to sort their act out before Judgement Day, which, according to Muhammad (speaking over 1300 years ago), is going to happen any day now:

"Warn them of that Day, soon to come, when hearts shall reach up to throats, convulsed in agony. The wicked shall have no intimate friend, and no intercessor whose word is obeyed. He knows what eyes betray, and what hearts conceal. God shall judge in justice, while they, whom they worshipped instead of Him, can judge nothing. God is All-Hearing, All-Seeing."

Qur'an: The Satanic Verses

Sometimes, after Muhammad had a revelation, he realised that what the voice in his head had just said contradicted some of his earlier revelations. He and his followers concluded that Satan had temporarily supplanted the Angel Gabriel as the voice in Muhammad's head. These contradicting revelations were then removed from the canonical Qur'an.

(While we are on the subject of sanity, it is worth mentioning that Muhammad preached to both humans and invisible fire-spirits.)

The 'Satanic verses' were the inspiration for the eponymous novel by Salman Rushdie. Shortly after the novel was published, Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, publicly offered money to anyone who murdered Rushdie.

Salman Rushdie had to go into hiding, constantly moving from place to place. Several attempts were made on his life. His Norwegian publisher was shot several times in the back with a rifle; his Japanese and Italian translators were attacked.

Religious leaders from around the world - the Vatican, the church of England, America, Israel - all sided with... the Ayotollah. The Archbishop of Canterbury called for Rushdie to be arrested for blasphemy, but the law only covered blasphemy against Christianity (this law was abolished in 2008; yes, blasphemy against Christianity was illegal in Britain until 2008, and people were still being arrested for it in the 1990s). The fatwa against Salman Rushdie is still in place, but the Iranian government has since declared that it will neither support nor hinder anyone's attempt to murder him.

That was in 1989. It is a sign of progress that the response to the recent Charlie Hebdo attack (whose cartoons were far more insulting than Rushdie's novel) has mostly been a chorus of 'Fuck you' to the violent extremists.

"We sent not any messenger or prophet before you but one who, when prophesying, Satan intrudes into his prophecies. God then abrogates Satan's intrusions, and God enshrines His revelations, and God is Omniscient, All-Wise. And this, in order to make what Satan interpolates a seduction to those in whose hearts lies sickness, or whose hearts are hard."