Boreal
Getting to Know Allah
Allah Days
14:5
We have, indeed, sent Moses with our Signs (sayings): “Bring your people out of
the darkness and into the light and remind them of Allah Days (major events or
calamities).” Surely in those are signs for every steadfast and thankful person.
17:15 He who is well-guided is well-guided for himself, and he who goes astray goes astray to his own loss. No soul shall bear the burden of another soul, and We do not punish until We have sent a Messenger.
“Allah Days,” writes Moududi, “are evil days from Allah.” These divinely ordained disasters, “the nearer punishment” in Revelation 32:21, are meant to get the survivors, if any, thinking of the greater punishment, that of “the punishment of the Fire” in Revelation 32:20, and to “repent” for not believing in Allah’s Signs.
32:18 Is he who believes, then, like he who is a sinner? No, they are not equal.
32:19 As for those who believe and do the righteous deeds, they will have gardens of refuge to receive them, for what they used to do.
32:20 But, as for the sinners, their refuge is the Fire. Every time they want to get out of it, they are brought back and it will be said to them: “Taste the punishment of the Fire which you used to deny.”
32:21 We shall surely let them taste the nearer punishment, prior to the greater punishment, that perchance they might repent.
32:22 Who is more unjust than he who is reminded of Our Signs, then he turns away from them? We will certainly wreck vengeance upon the criminals.
A Litany of Death and Destruction
26:208 We have never destroyed a city, but it had prior warners,
26:209 As a reminder; and We have never been unjust.
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28:59 Your Lord, however, never destroys the cities, unless He first sends to their mother-city a Messenger, to recite to them Our Revelations. And We never destroy any cities, unless their inhabitants are wrongdoers.
There is the horrors of a Judgement Day to come, but not before Allah has repeatedly unleashed His days of evil in the here-and-now on mostly unsuspecting populations who repudiated those He claims to have sent to warn them on His behalf.
30:42 Say: “Travel in the land and behold what was the fate of those who came before; most of them were idolaters.”
30:43 So, set your face towards the true religion, before a Day from Allah comes, which cannot be turned back. On that Day they will be rent asunder.
30:44 Whoever disbelieves, upon him shall recoil his unbelief and whoever does a righteous deed, it is for themselves that they will be preparing a comfortable abode.
30:45 That He may reward those who have believed and done the righteous deeds out of His Bounty. Indeed, He does not love the unbelievers.
30:47 We have, indeed, sent Messengers to their own people before you (Muhammad), and they brought them clear proofs. Then We revenged upon those who sinned, and it was incumbent on Us to give the believers support.
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40:21 Have they not journeyed in the land and seen what was the ultimate fate of those who came before them? Then Allah seized them because of their sins, and against Allah they had no protectors.
40:22 That is because their Messengers used to come to them with the clear proofs, but they disbelieved. So Allah seized them; He is indeed Strong, Terrible in retribution.
After not believing in Allah exclusively and that He governs alone, the worst you can do is not believe in the Hereafter and a Judgement Day when He will bring you back to life.
23:31 Then, We brought out after them another generation (The people of ‘Ad, who were raised to power after the people of Noah, Moududi).
23:32 So, We sent them a Messenger of their own, saying: “Worship Allah, you have no other god than Him. Do you not fear [Allah]?”
23:33 Then the dignitaries of his people, who had disbelieved and denied the meeting of the Hereafter and whom We accorded ease in the present life, said: “This is, indeed, merely a mortal like you; he eats from what you eat and drinks from what you drink.
23:34 “If you obey a mortal like yourselves, you are surely the losers.
23:35 “Does he promise you that once you die and turn into dust and bones, you will be brought back?
23:36 “Far, far away is what you are promised!
23:37 “There is only this our earthly life; we die and we live, but we shall not be raised from the dead.
23:38 “He is only a man who fabricates lies about Allah and we will not believe in him.”
The familiar, in this instance unspoken demand, from the Messenger is that Allah murder every unbelieving inhabitant of the city or town he visited, no matter their sex or age, because some called him a liar.
23:39 He said: “Lord, support me against their calling me a liar.”
23:40 He (Allah) said: “In a little while they will regret.”
Away with them!
23:41 Then the Cry seized them justly, and so We turned them into scum. Away then with the wrongdoing people!
23:42 Then We raised up after them other generations.
23:43 No nation hastens its term; nor will they put it back.
Away with all of them!
23:44 Then We sent Our Messengers one after the other. Every time a Messenger came to his nation, they denied him. So We made them succeed one another and reduced them to mere tales. Away with the people who do not believe.
It does not matter that within a population marked for annihilation are good, if poor people; if the wealthy among them refuse to obey the Messenger, it is death to everyone.
17:16 And when We want to destroy a city, We command those of its people who are given to luxury; but as they transgress therein Our sentence against it is pronounced and We utterly destroy it.
17:17 How many generations We have destroyed since Noah! It suffices that your Lord knows and sees the sins of His Servants.
It’s all about being humble.
6:42 We have indeed sent forth [Messengers] to other nations before you (Muhammad) and We afflicted them with misery and hardship that perchance they might humble themselves.
6:43 If only they humbled themselves when Our Punishment overtook them; but their hearts were hardened and the Devil made what they were doing seem fair to them.
Happy Days are a harbinger of Allah Days.
6:44 Then, when they forgot what they were reminded of, We opened wide for them the gates of everything [good]; so that as soon as they rejoiced at what they were given, We struck them down suddenly, and they were driven to despair.
6:45 Thus the remnant of the wrongdoing people were rooted out, Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds!
With His indiscriminate mass killings, which include infants who have no appreciation that not believing in this 'Allah' means death and an eternity being roasted like a lamb on a spit, God’s claim that He only destroys “the wrongdoing people” is specious in the extreme.
6:47 Say: “Tell me! If Allah’s Punishment should seize you suddenly or openly, will any be destroyed other than the wrongdoing people?”
6:48 And We only send forth the Messengers as bearers of good tidings and warners. Those who believe and mend their ways have nothing to fear and have no cause to grieve.
6:49 But those who deny Our Revelations will be punished for having been sinful.
He destroys one generation, only to raise another which He will also ultimately, utterly destroy.
THE CATTLE
6 Al-An’âm
In the Name of Allah,
the Compassionate, the Merciful
6:1 Praise be to Allah, Who created the heavens and the earth and made the darkness and the light; yet the unbelievers set up equals to their Lord.
6:2 It is He Who created you from clay, then decreed a term [for you] and another set term with Him, but still you doubt.
6:3 He is Allah in the heavens and on earth. He knows your secrets and public utterances, and He knows what you earn (the good and evil you do).
6:4 And there comes not to them a revelation from Allah, but they turn away from it.
6:5 So, they denied the truth when it came to them; but surely the news of what they were mocking will come to them.
6:6 Do they not see how many generations before them We destroyed, after We had established them in the earth more firmly than We had established you (the Meccans to whom Muhammad revealed most of the Koran), and how We let loose the sky upon them in torrents, and We made the rivers flow beneath them? Thus we destroyed them because of their sins. And after them We raised another generation.
Allah will extinguish one generation after another, but not before He has unleashed a litany of His days of evil in the hope that they will humble themselves and fear the god responsible for so much “distress and suffering.”
7:94 We did not send forth a Prophet to any city but afflicted its people with distress and suffering, that perchance they might humble themselves.
7:95 Then We changed their adversity into well-being, till they multiplied. They said: “Hardship and prosperity did visit our fathers.” Then, We seized them suddenly, while they were unaware.
Allah seems to have a desert dweller’s mistrust of “the people of the cities”—or could it be envy?
7:96 Yet had the people of the cities believed and feared Allah, We would have opened upon them blessings from the sky and the earth (rain from the sky, plants from the earth); but they denied [the Prophets], and so We destroyed them on account of their misdeeds.
The most wretched thing about Allah’s days of evil is that they are preordained, so there is nothing anyone can do to deter them.
THE ROCK (THAMUD)
15 Al-Hijr
In the Name of Allah,
the Compassionate, the Merciful
15:1 Alif – Lam Ra. These are the Verses of the Book and a manifest Qur’an.
15:2 Perhaps those who disbelieve wish they were Muslims.
15:3 Leave them to eat, enjoy themselves and let [false] hopes beguile them; for they will soon know. 1
5:4 We have never destroyed a town but it had a fixed decree.
15.5 No nation can hasten its term, nor defer it.
Every one of Allah’s disasters was prerecorded in a book.
57:22 Not a disaster befalls in the earth or in yourselves but is in a Book, before We create it. That for Allah is an easy matter.
57:23 So that you may not grieve for what you missed, and rejoice in what came your way. Allah does not like the conceited and the boastful; 57:24 Those who are niggardly and bid people to be niggardly. He who turns away, Allah is All-Sufficient, Praiseworthy.
Evil days as a bounty from Allah.
53:50 And that He destroyed the first ‘Ad;
53:51 And Thamud, as well, leaving nothing behind;
53:52 And the people of Noah before that; for they were more unjust and domineering;
53:53 And brought down the subverted city (Sodom, city of Lot);
53:54 So, He covered it with what He covered.
53:55 Which of your Lord’s Bounties, then, do you doubt?
Death will not bring any relief from what God admits is “an abominable punishment” for those who had the impudence to deny His Messengers.
65:8 How many a city transgressed arrogantly the Command of its Lord and His Messengers; and so We brought it to account severely and punished it with an abominable punishment.
65:9 And so it tasted the bane of its deed and the outcome of its deed was perdition.
65:10 Allah has prepared for them a terrible punishment. So fear Allah, O people of understanding who have believed. Allah has sent down to you a reminder,
65:11 A Messenger, reciting to you the Signs of Allah fully clarified; so as to bring those who have believed and done the righteous deeds from the shadows of darkness to light. He who believes in Allah and does the righteous deed, Allah will admit him into Gardens, beneath which rivers flow, dwelling therein forever. Allah has assigned to him a fair provision.
65:12 It is Allah Who created seven heavens and of the earth like thereof. The Decree descends among them all, that you might know that Allah has power over everything and that Allah has encompassed everything in knowledge.
Allah is not above creating disasters by proxy.
6:65 Say: “It is He Who has the power to inflict upon you punishment from above you or from under your feet; or to mix you up dividing you into factions, and make you taste the might of one another.” See, how We make plain our revelations, that, perchance they might understand.
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God revealed that He created nations and tribes in an effort to get people to get to know each other, after which He may have divided them into factions.
49:13 O mankind, We have created you male and female and made you nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another. Surely the noblest of you in Allah’s Sight is the most pious. Allah indeed is All-Knowing, All-Informed.
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The audacity of a god who dares to lay claim to being the embodiment of opposites (Revelation 16:47)!
16:45 Do those who devise evil feel assured that Allah will not cause the earth to swallow them up, or that punishment will not overtake them from whence they do not expect?
16:46 Or that He will not seize them in the course of their journeys, when they will not be able to escape?
16:47 Or that He will not seize then while in dread? Surely your Lord is Clement, Merciful.
Allah’s Way is the only way, and that will never change. To even try to make God adapt to changing circumstances and a more enlightened constituency is to invite retaliation on a genocidal scale!
35:42 They (the Arabs, Moududi) swore their most earnest oaths that if a warner came to them they would surely be more guided than a certain nation (the Jewish or Christian nation). But when a warner came to them, that only increased their aversion.
35:43 Out of arrogance in the land and evil cunning. Yet the evil cunning will only recoil upon its perpetrators. Do they then look to anything other than the way of the ancients? For you will never find any alteration of Allah’s Way, and you will never find any deflecting of Allah’s Way.
35:44 Have they not travelled in the land to see what was the fate of those who came before them and were even mightier than they? Nothing in the heavens or the earth can thwart Allah; He is indeed All-Knowing, All-Powerful.
It is a testament to the human race’s resilience that even after reports of massive, pitiless annihilations of people throughout the Koran—courtesy of a god who claims to be the essence of Compassion and Mercy—the Earth’s population, at this writing, surpasses six billion souls, with unbelievers outnumbering believers by approximately two to one. This is not to say that The Forgiver, whose scheming is legendary, will not be in a position to redress this imbalance in a generation or two, or perhaps earlier, such that all unbelievers will have left this mortal realm to become “companions of the Fire.”
THE FORGIVER
40 Ghâfir
In the Name of Allah,
The Compassionate, the Merciful
40:1 Ha – Mim.
40:2 The sending down of the Book is from Allah, the All-Mighty, the All-Knowing.
40:3 The Forgiver of sins, Receiver of repentance, Terrible in retribution, the Bountiful. There is no god but He. Unto Him is the ultimate return.
40:4 No one disputes concerning the Signs of Allah, except the unbelievers; so do not be deceived by their wandering in the lands.
40:5 Before them, the people of Noah and the Confederates[6] after them have denounced, and each nation sallied forth against their Messenger to seize him, and they disputed falsely to repudiate therewith the truth. Then I seized them. How, then, was my retribution?
40:6 And thus your Lord’s Word against the unbelievers was fulfilled, that they are, indeed, the companions of the Fire.
Allah is not actually asking believers to forgive the unbelievers who do not hope for Allah’s days of evil.
45:14 Tell the believers to forgive those who do not hope for Allah’s Days, that He may reward a people for what they used to earn.
Moududi:
The commentators have given two meanings of this verse and the words of the verse admit of both: (1) "That the believers should pardon the excesses of this wicked group so that Allah may reward them for their patience and forbearance and nobility from Himself and recompense them for the persecutions they have suffered for His sake." (2) "That the believers should pardon these people so that Allah may Himself punish them for their persecutions of them." Some other commentators have regarded this verse as repealed. They say that this command was applicable only till the Muslims were permitted to fight. Then, when they were permitted to fight, this command became abrogated.
In He Who allows disasters to devastate we trust.
64:11 No disaster befalls but by Allah’s Leave. Whoever believes in Allah, He will guide his heart rightly. Allah has knowledge of everything.
64:12 Obey Allah and obey the Messenger. If you turn away, it is only incumbent on Our Messenger to deliver the manifest message.
64:13 Allah, there is no god but He; and in Allah let the believers put their trust.
Allah admitting that much of what He does is an abomination:
67:18 Those who preceded you have disbelieved. How then was My Abomination?
It’s enough to make people despair of Allah’s Mercy.
39:53 Say: “O My servants, who have been excessive against themselves: Do not despair of Allah’s Mercy; Allah remits all sins. He is indeed the All-Forgiving, the All-Clement.
39:54 “Return to your Lord and submit to Him before punishment visits you then you will have no support.
39:55 “And follow the fairest of what has been sent down to you from your Lord, before punishment visits you suddenly while you are unaware.
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[6] Tribes who joined the Meccans against the Muslims at the battle for Medina (see Jihad in the Koran: "Medina," Boreal Books). The reason for their inclusion here is anyone’s guess.