From Ingratitude to Murder of the Messengers

وَإِذ قُلتُم يا موسىٰ لَن نَصبِرَ عَلىٰ طَعامٍ واحِدٍ فَادعُ لَنا رَبَّكَ يُخرِج لَنا مِمّا تُنبِتُ الأَرضُ مِن بَقلِها وَقِثّائِها وَفومِها وَعَدَسِها وَبَصَلِها ۖ قالَ أَتَستَبدِلونَ الَّذي هُوَ أَدنىٰ بِالَّذي هُوَ خَيرٌ ۚ اهبِطوا مِصرًا فَإِنَّ لَكُم ما سَأَلتُم ۗ وَضُرِبَت عَلَيهِمُ الذِّلَّةُ وَالمَسكَنَةُ وَباءوا بِغَضَبٍ مِنَ اللَّهِ ۗ ذٰلِكَ بِأَنَّهُم كانوا يَكفُرونَ بِآياتِ اللَّهِ وَيَقتُلونَ النَّبِيّينَ بِغَيرِ الحَقِّ ۗ ذٰلِكَ بِما عَصَوا وَكانوا يَعتَدونَ

"And [recall] when you said, "O Moses, we can never endure one [kind of] food. So call upon your Lord to bring forth for us from the earth its green herbs and its cucumbers and its garlic and its lentils and its onions." [Moses] said, "Would you exchange what is better for what is less? Go into [any] settlement and indeed, you will have what you have asked." And they were covered with humiliation and poverty and returned with anger from Allāh [upon them]. That was because they [repeatedly] disbelieved in the signs of Allāh and killed the prophets without right. That was because they disobeyed and were [habitually] transgressing. " (Quran 2:61)

I was listening to a student's recitation of this verse during the tasmi' class this morning when i thought, just look at how ungrateful the Children of Israel were. They were gifted with heavenly food namely the Manna and Salwa (a type of honey and bird) which Allah sent down upon them daily. Yet they were unhappy and wanted more variety, so they called upon Musa to ask Allah to bring forth from the earth all the various kinds of earthly foods. They were willing to trade heavenly food for something earthly just because the latter had more variety and seemed better in their eyes.

It is interesting how Allah then says they drew upon themselves the wrath of Allah, and ended up in misery because they denied His Signs and killed the prophets without right, for they were a people who always trangressed. Wait a second. The verse began with how they were ungrateful towards Allah for the heavenly food He gifted them and sought to replace it with lesser earthly food just because it was 'less boring', but at the end of the verse, suddenly Allah says they killed the prophets without right. How are these two related? The essence of ingratitude is the want for all things to follow one's own will, and perhaps the gravest manifestation of that attitude is murder of the Messengers of God who came to ask humanity to humble itself before God, to challenge such an arrogant attitude.

On a more figurative level, perhaps the verse can be applied to those of us who prefer to follow certain ideologies or philosophies which are man made and hence earthly, exchanging our heavenly gift of Islam with them. Or to follow newly invented matters by the people, which not infrequently replace the sunnah acts taught to us by our Messenger SAW. In such cases, we too are murdering our Prophet because we seek to replace his sunnah with bid'ah (like insisting on reading Ya seen instead of al-Kahf on Friday night). It is not physical murder, but it is murder nonetheless.

May Allah save us from the arrogance of wanting all things to be in accordance with our will, for how dare we have such arrogance when we are but His servants. May He help us to be grateful for all His blessings, physical and spiritual, so we do not seek to replace His heavenly gifts, namely the Quran and the sunnah, with earthly, man-made ideologies and newly invented matters which are inherently lesser and inevitably lead to loss. Ameen.

Homosexuality and Blasphemy

Last night, while studying the Quran with a friend, I noticed something strange. If we study surah Al-A'raf, surah Hud and and surah Asy-Syu'ara, we will find that there is a section in the surah with repeated phrases about the prophets of old and their message. The ones common to all of them are Nuh, Hud, Soleh, Lut and Syuaib.

Now in surah Al-A'raf and Hud, you will notice that the usual pattern of verses when Allah speaks about the prophets stops for a while at the story of Lut, and the same pattern continues again after him when Syuaib is introduced. Each of the prophets apart from Lut was introduced as a brother to their people and they spoke the same words i.e. worship Allah for you have no deity worthy of worship except for Him. Then they rebuke their people for the specific sins they were involved in. Lut however is not given that kind of introduction. Allah narrates his story without mentioning his brotherhood to his people but jumps straight into his rebuking them for their filthy crime of sodomy. Two things are different here. His brotherhood to them is not emphasized, and there is no mention about worshiping one God alone. Their sin of sodomy was so great, Allah did not even bother to mention the main message all prophets came with that is the call to Monotheism, and instead jumped straight into the evil of their crime. It is as if Allah wanted to say, the sin of sodomy is comparable to the sin of worshiping other Gods besides Allah, which we know is the greatest sin of all. And since the sin of sodomy is mentioned straight away, Allah did not introduce Lut as the brother of his people because it would be inappropriate to say he was the brother of a people who were indulging in filth.
Now in surah Asy-Syu'ara however, he is introduced as a brother to his people, just like the other prophets, and if we look closely we will see that his initial words to them are about fearing Allah and obeying him as a messenger. Only after that their sin of sodomy is mentioned. So mentioning their brotherhood to him in this context is appropriate because his preaching to them does not start off with their filthy actions, but with the message of obedience to God.

How miraculously consistent is the Quran. A man would not be able to write a story with this sort of precision. The mood of each surah dictates the way the story is told. Lut was of course a brother to his people (which also proves that, we are all brothers in humanity regardless of how we feel about the 'other' person's vileness), but he was only introduced as such in a context where their filth was not mentioned first i.e. in surah Asy-Syuara'. It is not fitting that he should be mentioned as their brother in the contexts in the other two suras given his high status. The versions in the first two suras mentioned also remind us about the enormity of the sin of sodomy, and thus we should not view it lightly, especially in our times when all filth is considered normal and encouraged even.
Wal'iyazubillah.

p/s: Nuh too is not called a brother in the 2 suras but that's because he is the 1st in the list, and has a different introduction. But his message is still the same as the others. Lut is the only exception.

And Allah knows best.