(The Blue Koran, Brooklyn Museum,New York. From 9th Century Spain, Sura 4 "The Women")
Introduction
The other week I decided to read the whole Koran for myself to clarify what it actually says. It’s surprisingly accessible on one level because it’s purposefully divided into 7 parts to read in 7 days, and written in the simplicity of an oral tradition. In fact it says, “Recite of the Koran as much as is easy/ we have made it easy, as a remembrance/we place not a burden on any soul but to its capacity”. One reading is just a cursory glance, not scholarly, but sometimes an outline scan is useful.
And it’s also useful to divorce a book from religious fervour. For instance, I value the poetic imagery and rhetoric of King James Bible long after dismissing its violent and misogynist ideology, accepting my early love of language was influenced by archaic sermons or hymns, an ear for words, so now I appreciate that literary influence because no longer subject to its indoctrination.
The Bible is long and originally in Latin from Greek so dependent on the intermediary translation of clerics. Ordinary people were not encouraged to read it for themselves, still apparent in parts of Ireland. The New Testament was written in hindsight at a time when the Roman Church was fighting to establish itself so there was much censorship of material to “get the story right”. It was literary and politically motivated. Most of the omissions have since been rediscovered and collated, telling a very different story from the official dogma, (See Apocrypha/ Nag Hammadi Library etc.).
The Koran, however, belongs to an oral tradition of storytelling with mnemonic techniques. It was spoken by Mohammed to companions who immediately wrote it down without alteration, and it’s the duty of all Muslims to recite it for themselves without intermediary, which is perhaps why medieval Muslims were more literate than medieval Christians. There is this sense of a singular voice because no one altered it. The method used is similar to all sufi storytelling, primarily what they call “scatter”, which means non-sequential, without order, bits of this and that, here and there. Chapters are a mixture of styles and narratives. It’s designed to keep you alert and active. You just dip in where ever, even from back to front, and there is much repetition so that the main points are reinforced and easy to remember. Fairy folk tales use similar methods. (In fact chapter 96 is considered the first in order).
The layout is specific. It starts with the longest chapters which cover lineage, placing Islam in context with other religions. These long chapters contain practical guidelines for living together, including The Criterion (surah 25), which is the equivalent of the Ten Commandments. They are the most difficult chapters in terms of detail and memorising, but throughout there are directions for breathing, pausing and intonation. The chapters get progressively smaller and easier to remember but harder to understand because more cryptic or mystical, culminating in short bursts of emotional states like euphoria, agitation or catharsis. It’s a book to be spoken, not read, with emphasis on the sound of Classical Arabic which is considered a sacred language like Sanskrit, where the words have power in themselves, so not a study text, but a living communication, voice to ear.
This makes the choice of translation important, so I used two; one by N.J.Dawood in 1953 which is academic and highly respected, the other by Laleh Bakhtiar, a feminist Iranian American influenced by modern psychology. However there isn’t much difference between them, which suggests they keep close to the text as it was intended, so hopefully that’s a sign Im reading it authentically. There are small cultural differences, like Dawood writes “God” where Bakhtiar writes “God consciousness”, Dawood writes “infidel” where Bakhtiar writes “ungrateful ones”, Dawood writes “Man” where Bakhtiar writes “Humanity”.
There are 114 chapters, called surahs, which means “enclosures”, which suggests thoughts being herded into groups. Each surah is divided into verses called ayats, meaning “signs”, suggesting they signify more than they say. Some chapters run into each other, others end mid sentence, and some begin as if in the middle of conversation, all sporadic according to revelation. This sense of movement from large to small all interlinked suggests a unity represented in the diminution from chapter to verse to word to letter to sound to breath. There is much discussion about the use of Arabic letter sounds that appear without explanation in the chapters, like Alif/ Lam/ Min/Hud /Qaf /Ta Ha/Ya Sin etc. Most of these can be found in “The Glossary of Sufi technical terms”, written by al-Qashani before 1330, a sort of early psychology about states of being that can be developed, so Alif indicates unity, Lam indicates insight, and Ra indicates attention. Much of this early spiritual psychology was later assimilated into Jungian psychology.
Here is an example of how small relates to large in the Koran: The letter “A” is alif in Arabic, aleph in Hebrew, alpha in Greek, all derived from Phoenician. It is the first letter and beginning of the alphabet .In Arabic script it is written as “I”, a straight line down, similar to “one” in Arabic numerals. As a number, “One” represents the undivided whole, unity, the beginning. So “A”=”I”=Unity. When Alif is mentioned in a chapter it alerts all these connections to an Arabic speaker, a constant reminder of the godhead as original unity, which is why the language itself is seen as sacred or spiritual.
So the Koran is created as representative of a whole that is scattered into diverse but related parts, much like Creation itself, a living principle. Later chapters get very short with a sense of mounting excitement, even ecstatic, with the final verses left hanging without any sense of finality, a voice suspended. The energy escalates and then dissipates. The effect is left in the experiential Self, not didactic on the page, so you are left open to your own understanding. This book, which starts with an invocation to God and spirituality in a chapter called “The Opening” ends with a chapter called “Humanity”, focusing on the human condition, so there is this channel between Spirit and Man in the form of revelation, (Revelation is inspiration out of nowhere or from the subconscious). The last word is “Humanity”, and I find that very significant because where as the first word is with God, the last word is with the human being, grounded. This is only my personal interpretation, but that’s how the Koran was intended to be read.
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These are the main characteristics:
1) The Unity of Being.
There is constant affirmation that “God is One, Lord of the worlds, of the East and West and whatever is between, of the seen and unseen, the same God of the Jews and the Christians, the one who is aware, the originator of the heavens and the earth, the one who sends angels and messengers with wings by twos and threes and fours, who made in pairs.....Your community is one community and I am your Lord, but they have cut asunder their affair between them, yet all of them are ones who return to Us”
This is stipulated again and again, that the world is as one with one God, but that it has been torn apart into differences and quarrels. “Humanity had been of one community... God is your return altogether. He who begins creation will cause it to return. Then he will tell you about your variance, competing with one another in sin and deep seated dislike and consuming wrongfulness. ..Turn aside from the ones who are polytheists.”
The signs of this unity are everywhere and in Nature, “the heaven and earth had been interwoven and we unstitched them, making every living thing of water. There are signs in nature for those who are clear to hear and see.... Among the mountains are white and red streaks, and others raven black”.(For the same colour symbolism see Upanishads and story of Snow White, but the local mountains of Sinai are also streaked in these three colours). Many chapter headings are from Nature; The Cow, The flocks, Thunder, The Bee, The Spider, The Ant, Light, The Curving Sandhills, The Winnowing Winds, The Moon, The Constellations(Pole Star/Sirius), Dawn, The sun, The Fig, The Elephant. So this natural world is to be respected as signs of Truth, not subservient to Man but part of the same unity. There is emphasis on the nurturance of paradisal gardens with flowers and date palm oasis and water and livestock, understandable for a people living in hash desert conditions.
“Allah” is the name given to this Unity or Greater Reality. It is beyond compare or analogy and not pictorial, discernable only in its effects but not in itself, so we see signs of it if we learn to look, and we hear about its known aspects (eg. the 99 names), but it remains ineffable. The most valued aspect of this greater reality is “compassion/mercy”, mentioned in every chapter, “where there is benevolence, God multiplies it”, so a mutual system of small kindnesses is universally beneficial. This seems to be the opposite of Natural Selection and survival of the fittest. Here everything has its place and is co-operative, equal in the Greater Reality of Allah, however weak, however strong, and each part has a responsibility to the other. (There is an understandable attraction in this concept for those disillusioned with competitive capitalism which might explain those modern terrorists who suddenly change from living one way to another).
Unity relates historically because Islam developed at a time of struggle between indigenous polytheists and emerging monotheists, but it also relates psychologically as the human psyche oscillates between unity and a divided Self. This Unity of Being and the fall from that state of Grace operates on many levels and is not exclusive to the Koran. Plotinus, Pythagoras and Plato were all aware of it as a concept from the ancient world. ( see “the unifying principle of relationship, ratio and proportion” of Pythagoras/Apollo, “a”not, ”pollon “of many”/Ammon, the one god of Akhenaton/Plotinus “Doctrine of Degrees”, the idea that everything that exists corresponds on different levels implying a unifying principle by which everything is related, including Man, all parts of the whole/”All is One and One is all”, Xenophanes, which echoes in The Three Musketeers cry of “all for one and one for all”) The neo Platonist monk, Dionysius the Aeropagite, wrote about it in the 5th Century and later still Shakespeare was writing about it in his plays (Macbeth/Tempest/Lear). It permeates English poetry from Milton to Yeats.
Each epoch redefines the same concepts in different words, so unity reappears at the heart of some modern psychologies in the integrative bliss of childhood before the painful divisions of adult consciousness. From a secular point of view one might say, there is an original state of unity which is manifest as diversity and interpreted as such by the human mind, but this illusion can be exposed by the constant contemplation of that Unity; one god, one community, one creation, one Self, all connected. It’s one of the most ancient and universally held metaphysical concepts, and the Koran affirms it with rigorous repetition, cautioning not to forget because it is vital.
Here it is reconstructed to convey the rhythmic effect of the Arabic original (surah 112):
“Say, this, Allah, is but One!
Of days neither ended, nor begun.
Begetting not, a son of none,
And none is like to it, not one.”
2) Islam in context.
Large chunks of early chapters are about placing Islam historically and practically, recognising its development from earlier religions, in particular the “people of the book” whose common root is Abraham. It repeats that there is a long line of prophets or “warners” who are a “light and guidance”, named as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Ishmael, Enoch, Aaron, Solomon, Job, Joseph, Moses and Jesus, and Mohammed who completes or “seals” this line. “We have sent messengers to communities before you/ I am only a warner who makes clear/ a straight path sent down successively to warn folks”. The reader is encouraged to know and accept this history, not deny it.
The Christians are described as misled by thinking Jesus is God and for demoting Mary the Mother, “a contentious folk, we made Mary and her son a sign for the worlds/ we consign to those who follow Jesus tenderness and mercy, but as to monasticism, they made that up themselves.” (A lot of early Christians would have agreed with this like Celtic monks who married and Gnostics who questioned Jesus’ divinity). The Jews are described as “the haughty folk who do not extend their hand, who go astray from the right way, corrupting in and on the earth, tampering with words out of context”. Muslims are not seen as special and exclusive but as the continuation of a tradition. About the region of the Middle East it says, “we said to the children of Israel after Pharaoh to inhabit the region so when draws near the promise of future worlds, we will bring you about a mixed group”, suggesting integration, not division. “Be not among those who separated and divided their way of life and have been partisan”, it says. (This surely has implications for modern regional politics).
In terms of public relations between communities, the Koran repeatedly advocates tolerance and balance and justice. The phrase repeated is “be reasonable” and “turn aside”. So, “fight in the way of God those who fight you, but commit no aggression, truly God loves not the ones who are aggressors. Be restrained, do whatever is feasible....Whoever kills one who believes, his recompense is hell. Co-operate with one another in virtuous conduct and in God.....Turn aside from the enemy. In reciprocation there is the saving of Life. God loves the ones who are equitable....commit no aggression...turn aside...will you not then be reasonable...a folk who are reasonable. Be sincere, guard the unseen.....Limit your hands from warfare.”
Jihad is the “greater struggle” within the Self, a struggle between reason (Good) and passion (Evil) for the attention of the Heart. It’s about the mastery of the Self, similar to the psychomachy of medieval morality plays, or the Philokalia of Byzantine Christianity, or the struggle in the Self of depth analysis psychologies. What was once called a “quest” is now called “self-examination”. This “greater struggle” is more important than the “lesser struggle” of convincing others to Islam.
It’s hard to reconcile all this with what happens in Middle Eastern politics today. However, this emphasis on balance and moderation, mercy and compassion, justice and critical judgement, Reason and Consciousness, permeates all aspects of social behaviour in the Koran, from dealing with strangers to travellers to infidels to women to orphans, and men to each other. Social behaviour and obligations are recorded in great detail because social cohesion ensures survival, ”God has sent forth this book with the Truth and with the Balance.”
3) Values and Laws
The Criterion (25) is advice about morality or creating social order; right and wrong, good and evil, lawful and unlawful, how to judge, how to measure and balance, how to behave publicly and privately. The highest virtue is “compassion”; the vices are ignorance, polytheism, division, delusion or corruption, hypocrisy, sorcery, forgetfulness. Discord is “Enmity sown by Satan”. All conduct is best ruled by moderation and “being reasonable”; “the ones who are excessive will cause to perish/ beware the ones who are excessive/he loves not the ones who are excessive”. This moderation includes everything from clothing which should be modest in both men and women ,to exemption from fasting on the grounds of sickness or menstruation ,“do not go beyond the limits in your way of life/follow not your desires that you become unbalanced.”Austere extremes (like martyrdom or celibacy) are not encouraged, even during Ramadan which is considered a remembrance of suffering and not a suffering in itself, so the fasting is moderate, broken at nightfall.
Descriptions of Hell are very graphic, always associated with fire and torture, much more graphic than anything in the Bible and why Dante/Milton copied them into their writings. Descriptions of Heaven are conversely idyllic with the perfect symmetries of watered gardens and beautiful women. It’s the imagery of a desert people, scorched by one and blessed by the other, poetic storytelling nomads renowned for their mystical poetry. So we have “The Gardens of Bliss with the companions of the garden” and “the Fires of Torment with the companions of the fire”. Those who are reasonable and just experience Heaven, those who are unreasonable and unjust experience Hell.
Jihad is the battle in the human being between Good and Evil. Evil is not a presence so much as an imbalance, a force that causes division and delusion, “satan promises nothing but delusion”. Good is connected to the Reason of critical judgement: “we give critical judgement and knowledge to those who are good. Live up to the measuring vessel and balance in equity, and diminish not of humanity their things, and do no mischief on the earth as ones who make corruption. Be the ones who are sincere, who guard the unseen......You assume the enemy is united but their hearts are towards diverse ends because they are a folk who are unreasonable....Perhaps God will bring affection between those with whom you are at enmity. God is compassionate. Be good and be equitable. God loves those who are equitable. Be God fearing of God in the ones who are God fearing of their God.”
This jihad or human dichotomy between Good and Evil is the strength and weakness of the human condition centred around the capacity for choice and the anxiety that creates, “Truly the human being was created fretful and anxious”. Satan, as Iblis, the fallen angel, is the one who refused to bow down to Man, refusing to accept those fallible human qualities God favoured over the angels in the creation of Adam. In not bowing down, Satan denies humanity, and that is the ultimate evil for which he is banished to wander alone and unloved by God, cut off. So, Satan is described as the “deceiver” who betrayed the human spirit.
This emphasis on Reason in human behaviour is interesting in a metaphysical context. It’s an important concept in Humanism developing via the Renaissance from the classical world. It’s the Reason in Humanity that creates balance and order out of disorderly emotions, standing between extremes. In developing this principle we put ourselves in order with the cosmic unity, taking our right place in the overall scheme of order, balance, harmony and rhythm in the universe, concepts that go back to the earliest civilizations (from Egypt to Greece) as a practical basis for government, but also for the arts, music and architecture. The Koran situates itself firmly with Reason and against extremes.
The rules in the Koran are very practical for hot countries; the avoidance of certain meats that rot like pork, the need to be fastidiously clean by ritual washing. I found no ban on figurative art as is popularly believed, just a ban on idolatry and polytheism, on deification. There are no specific references to women “wearing the veil” or burka, of women being inferior, and no specific justification for Holy War or organised aggression towards infidels. These may be later interpretations by men in conservative communities, using the Koran to maintain their own power.
There are laws with a fixed tariff of punishment from fasting to stoning( appropriate in historical context), and exact details about the role of witnesses and number of experts in disputes (perhaps revealing some cultural prejudice in the suggestion a woman needs more witnesses than a man because considered less “reasonable”!). There is a connection between right measure in business with right judgement in Law with an emphasis on defeating corruption by weighing up the balance in both cases by calculation. (This connection goes back to ancient Rome, the Roman Mint situated with the Law Temples, a connection still in London today where the Law Courts are close to Financial Centres as a power base). “When you contract a debt for a term, let one who is a scribe write it down between you justly and call witnesses”. A role in sentencing is given to the victim. In fact the judicial system (sharia) is highly developed, with women getting more rights than they did under early Christianity, the right to divorce and property and possessions in their own name.
“Humanity created he you from a single soul, and from it many men and women, through whom you demand mutual rights of one another, of the womb and of blood relations. ....Seek reconciliation in marriage, however it is honourable to let women go with kindness. It is not lawful you take anything from them you have given them. Hold them as ones who are honourable. Hold them not back by injuring them so that you commit aggression. Whoever commits aggression wrongs himself. Place not difficulties on them to remarry......If there is a breach between man and wife raise up an arbiter from his people and from her people. If they want to make things right, God will reconcile the two because God is compassionate”
Social obligations are clear and moderate. “There is no blame on you that you are poor or sick or old. God eliminates usury and he makes charity greater...Whoever has been rich let him have restraint, and whoever has been poor let him live as one who is honourable.... Provide for the mentally deficient.....To the ones who are your parents, kindness. Kill not your children from want. Live up to the full measure and balance with equity. When you have said something, be just. Live up to the compact with God. This is the straight path, a truth loving way of life”. There are strict rules of inheritance with onus on sons to provide for their mothers, also strict rules about adultery, incest, blood money, debt and emigration, rules about prayer and religious practices.
Social harmony is centred in marriage, and women are actually given a high status heading chapters like “Women”(4) and “Mary”(19) with prominence given to women in stories like the Queen of Sheba, Lot’s wife and Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is given higher status than in the Bible, “his mother was a just person, the favoured one”. Early Christianity spent most of its time undermining women. The duty of men to honour the mother is repeated many times in the Koran. Marriage is seen as an obligation, the highest ideal, not celibacy which is seen as an aberration. (Mohammed was unusual for his time. His first wife Kadija was much older than him and a source of inspiration and his daughter, Fatima, was highly favoured, so he was living with women and their influence, very different from Jesus with his male disciples, and early Muslim preachers were often women, like Rabbia).The Koran advocates an early “social welfare system” where widows are taken as wives in order to provide for them and their children:
“Consume not an orphans property with your own, and when they are of age release their property to them.... Marry who seems good to you the women 1, 2, 3 or 4, but if you fear you cannot be just and equal then marry only one....You will never be able to be just between wives.... Better you do not commit injustice. Give wives their marriage portion as a gift. It is not lawful for you that you inherit women unwillingly, and place not difficulties for them. Live as one who is honourable with them. If there is a dispute between you, first admonish, then abandon their sleeping places, then turn aside....Compel not your female youth to marriage against their will.”
4) Oral techniques
The Koran is a verbal communication and as such it is a mixture of tones and styles in order to keep our attention and retention. There are story narratives and dramas, explanations, queries, chants, parables or proverbs, histories, discourse, figurative visualisation, contemporary commentaries, character dramas, supernatural beings and other worlds, maybe even jokes. Prominent events from early chapters recur often. And certain qualities are strung through the chapters like precious beads on a necklace to remind us of their importance: mercy, compassion, balance, reason, justice, moderation, critical judgement and God-consciousness.
Throughout there is this almost physical tension between what creates Order and what creates Disorder, both within the Individual and Society. This conflict mounts into an eschatology revolving around “The Overwhelming Event” or the “Day of Reckoning”, a crisis of anxiety facing “fretful humanity” where the only resolution is certainty in “God”(Dawood) or “God Consciousness” (Bakhtiar). This is where the muslim concept of “submission” or surrender comes in as cathartic security, “place your trust in God/God will provide/God willing”.
The imperative is used regularly to jolt the reader; “Say/ Speak/ Recite/ Mention/ Repeat/ Reflect/ Awake”. These are directions like the inserts about breathing, intonation, movement and posture. So even its form of address affirms that “Unity of Being”, inviting the whole human being to respond; Body, Mind and Soul. Thus the style of the Koran matches its content.
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CONCLUSION
Mohammed delivered the Koran over 23 years from the age of 40 til his death, so it’s the work of maturity, not youth. After his death there were acrimonious divisions about succession which led to the political struggles of Muslim countries today; divisions between Sunni ( ie.Gulf States) and Shia (ie Iran), between literal Fundamentalists ( ie Wahabi/Salafids/exoteric) and lateral mystics (ie. Sufi symbolists/esoteric).Periods of creative enlightenment and unity ( ie, Nasrid Spain/Akbar in India) are followed by periods of oppressive conformity and exclusion ( banning mysticism, music and speculative discourse as decadence as with Rumi’s dervishes in Turkey, desecrating sufi shrines as idolatry as with the Taliban in Afghanistan).The Koran says, “all communities have their term”, indicating inevitable cycles of change and impermanence.
What prevails is the wording. Far from advocating hostility, these words urge to reorientate people with their spirituality, to restore balance in a chaotic world. The Koran is firmly in the tradition of “Manuals for Living” that extends as far back as the Upanishads and as far forward as the Depth Analysis of modern psychology, all of which are sincere, practical and cosmological. They have concepts in common like “Unity of Being” and “threefold” nature of existence, the struggle between dualistic forces and the role of Love. There are differences, for instance in the Koran there is this urgency, the physical presence of a single voice.
The Koran does not seem extreme as Christian fundamentalists assert, or a call to arms and conformity as the Islamists assert. Instead, it seems rooted in neo-platonic traditions, advocating moderation and tolerance in both lifestyle and beliefs, recognising universal and social laws that promote Order and Harmony and Integration, the same laws that re-emerged later in Renaissance Europe as Humanism. It places man as part of a “Greater Reality” with obligations to keep the balance of “law and order”, integrating the literalism of the mind with the emotions of the Body and the in-sights of the Soul, linking the laws of the cosmos with the laws of society and the laws of the Self (psyche).In doing so, it conveys Truths common to all the manuals though expressed differently according to culture and geography. These universal Truths are the book we are all living to read.
(Islam is not my religion, but this study is written in thanks to all those Muslim friends I encountered whilst living in Egypt, London and Ireland. We have more in common than our differences.)
