Episode 118: The Qur’an, Part 2: Ordinances

Episode 118: The Qur’an, Part 2: Ordinances

Hello, and welcome to Literature and History. Episode 118: The Qur’an, Part 2: Ordinances. In this program, we will discuss the legalistic materials in the Qur’an. The many surahs of the Qur’an set out rules for food and drink, contracts, inheritance, slaves, marriage and divorce, criminal law, prayer, pilgrimage, and more. All told, the ayat al-ahkam, or “legal verses,” make up just a few hundred of the Qur’an’s 6,200 or so verses, a fairly small swathe of what’s in the book. As small in number as the legal verses of the Qur’an are, they have been of substantial juristic interest in Islam since the seventh century, and their rulings affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people today.¹

Islamic law is a mountainous subject. After 1,300 years in development, it exists today in seven predominant schools, four Sunni, two Shia, and one Ibadi, along with some variations. Each school has its own sizable body of literature, and Islamic law more generally has an expansive dictionary of special terminology. Islamic law in practice has always involved both drawing from the Qur’an and often the hadiths, or literature about the life of Muhammad, as well as the exercise of human reason. By the time of the Abbasid Caliphate, the Qur’an and hadith texts were already a gigantic, varied body of work – as gigantic and varied as the territories of the Islamic empires. As enormous as the Qur’an and hadiths were, though, they didn’t cover everything. The legal scholars, or muftis, of early Islamic history thus needed to do a lot of thinking and writing to come up with legal decisions, and by the end of the 800s, bookcases full of Islamic legal literature had been born. Present-day Iraq, after all, was a different territory than present-day Iran and Israel, Tunisia and Andalusia, and while Islamic law was always emphatically rooted in the Qur’an and hadiths, a body of legal texts grew and grew based on other traditions. Islamic legal theory grew around concepts like ijma, or “consensus,” ‘urf, or “custom,” qiyas, or “legal reasoning by analogy,” ijtihad or, exhausting pursuit of answers to legal questions, and more. Muslim muftis, again legal scholars, faced some of the same challenges as diasporic rabbis during the centuries of the caliphates, in that they had to adapt a sacred legal framework that had developed in one very specific society to many different places and cultures, and their interpretive work and innovations are a huge part of Islamic history that still affects a lot of people today.

Our main subject in this show, though, will once again be the legal materials in the actual Qur’an, rather than the sprawling 1,300-year history of Islamic law that came about after the Qur’an. We will take a good long look at what the Qur’an actually says about charity, property rights, inheritance, peace, war, and the hijab, or veil, and many other subjects besides these. Before we open up the Qur’an, though, we should begin with a very quick overview of the development of Islamic law, and where the Qur’an sits within the complex framework of overall Islamic jurisprudence today. So here comes a quick summary of the 1,300-year history of Islamic law. [music]

A Short Introduction to Islamic Law

Before the life of Muhammad, the Hijaz, and the Arabian Peninsula more generally had their own evolving systems of regulations. As we learned in the opening programs of this season, Pre-Islamic Arabian tribes had bonds and agreements with one another that reflected the regions in which they operated. Bedouins, for instance, formalized covenants over grazing lands and sources of water. Commercially based tribes like Muhammad’s Quraysh had their own webs of inter- and intratribal arrangements and contracts with other merchant consortiums. Agriculture-based tribes like Medina’s Banu Nadir had their own trade and land use regulations, and Arab mercenaries working for imperial client kingdoms to the north also had codes and expectations that governed their work and daily lives. Pre-Islamic Arabia, then, had a lot of well-established rules and customs, and when Muhammad began his ministry in 610, he was a 40-year-old man of the world who knew a lot about these rules and customs. Some rules and customs of the Hijaz, or west Arabia, required no modification or commentary, as they were already consonant with Qur’anic values. Additionally, as Islam grew to new expanses of Eurasia and North Africa, some regions had their own cultural practices that persisted into the Islamic period, as these practices either did not interfere with, or were simply irrelevant to, Islamic law. During the 700s and 800s, in Islamic jurisprudence, the word ‘urf generally means regional customs, ancient or novel, that are generally consonant with, or not related to Islamic law, and thus considered neutral to positive from the perspective of Islamic law. So the first thing to remember about Islamic law is that sometimes, it just tells you to go ahead and keep doing what you’re already doing.

While some aspects of Islamic law were congruent and interoperable with older law codes, other aspects of Islamic law were newer, and rooted in the revelations of the Qur’an. Between 610 and 632, the revelations of Muhammad laid the main substructure for the future of Islamic law. And it is with these revelations that we need to define two terms central to Islamic law. These terms are first, Shariah, and second, Fiqh. Let’s start with Shariah, which means, “the right path,” or “guide.” Shariah is a sacred concept in Islam, as Shariah is understood as rooted in the divine revelations of Muhammad. Accordingly, the rules of Shariah have their deepest roots in the Qur’an and the Sunnah, or ways of the Prophet, as contained in the hadith literature. The Qur’an and hadiths, though the hadiths vary from school to school of Islamic law, contain the bedrock of Islamic morality and rules, with particular detail on prayers, almsgiving, the annual pilgrimage, and prayer. Shariah defines what is lawful (or halal) and unlawful (or haram). But while the Qur’an and hadith literature from which Shariah comes is expansive, Shariah never constituted a fully-fledged legal code that systematically governed all facets of society. For one, no one ever believed that every single hadith, or prophetic story about Muhammad, is true – the science of isnad, or the chain of transmitters. was born early in Islamic history to try and disentangle valid anecdotes about what Muhammad actually said and did from various stories that were later made up about him. The other reason Shariah, with its roots in the Qur’an, and words and deeds of Muhammad has never constituted the whole of Islamic law is simply that law codes are necessarily gigantic. The brevity of the Qur’an and the incidental nature of the hadith literature meant that these wellsprings of Islamic law needed to be augmented with further rulings.

If, then, we imagine the Qur’an and the hadiths as the wellspring of Shariah, or Islamic sacred law, around this wellspring is an encasement that channels Shariah into many different areas of Islamic life. This encasement is Fiqh, probably the second most important term in Islamic law behind Shariah. Fiqh – the word is spelled F-I-Q-H – is based not on divine revelation, but instead on the exercise of human reason. The goal of Fiqh is to take the sacred materials of the Qur’an and hadiths, and to adjudicate these materials into laws that govern society. While the wellspring of Shariah provides clear ground rules for some aspects of Islamic civilization, the Qur’an and hadiths are more open ended on matters of taxation, constitution and public policy, criminal law, and international relations. Muhammad’s Medina, as complex as it was, was not a civilization of the same scale as, say, Abbasid civilization at its apex, and Fiqh grew over the opening centuries of Islamic history to adapt the core regulations of Sharia to the vast territories of Islamic empires. To review, then, Shariah is the sacred wellspring of Islamic law, based on the Qur’an and hadiths, and Fiqh, downstream in history, is the network of judicatory channels that worked to apply Shariah to Islamic societies.

Fiqh has a long history, and one more complex than Shariah. The core materials of Shariah are all rooted in the Qur’an, and the life and deeds of Muhammad. Fiqh, however, sprang to life during the Rashidun caliphate, as the first four caliphs found themselves confronted with applying sacred law to larger and larger swathes of territories. By the time of the Umayyad caliphate – around 661-750, Fiqh had subdivided into traditionalist and rationalist schools, and as Shiites advanced their own rather different view of early Islamic history, another approach to Islamic law was born. As the Umayyad caliphate gave way to the Abbasid caliphate, in the years between about 750-900, four schools of Sunni jurisprudence were born that still persist to this day – the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali schools, each taking its name from an influential legal scholar who had a unique means of understanding how Fiqh should be codified from Shariah.

Much of the modern world has been shaped by debates in Islamic jurisprudence – debates that have their origins in the intellectual history of the ninth and tenth centuries. Muslim majority countries separately follow the teachings of the Hanafi, or Maliki, or Shafi’i, or Hanbali schools, the Shia Ja’fari school, or the Ibadi school – these six approaches to Islamic law, and the debates between them, have been at the heart of Fiqh for a long time. There are other schools of Islamic law, but in an introductory program like this one, it’s probably best to stick with the six I’ve just mentioned. Today’s madrasas are most often rooted in one of these six approaches to Islamic law, each of which represents a distinct vision of how Muslim societies ought to work and interact with the larger world. Fiqh, today, is alive and well in a world that more than ever, seemingly, needs adroit minds to help old laws remain respected and central in rapidly evolving Islamic societies around the world. [music]

The Ayat al-Ahkam

So that’s a breakneck introduction to the thousand-plus year history of Islamic law. When Shariah is discussed today in the Anglophone world, I think we often get the impression that it is a single framework, as old as Islam itself, that came straight down through history from seventh-century Mecca and Medina. And indeed, there are Qur’anic aspects of Shariah that are straightforward and have been unchanged since the years of Muhammad’s revelations. However, from the Rashidun caliphate on down to today, through all of the major and minor schools of Islamic law, some traditionalist, and some liberal; some Sunni, some Shia; some literalist, and some wildly exegetical, Islamic law is not just one thing. From the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 onward, Fiqh has been an ongoing project, and today, from fundamentalism to reformism, and from progressive to conservative legislation, channeling Fiqh correctly from the wellspring of Shariah remains a central part of how contemporary Islamic societies govern themselves.

While Islamic law is a colossal subject, the Qur’anic verses commonly called ayat al-ahkam, or “legal verses” are, as I said earlier, a fairly small part of the book. As scholar Muhammad Hashim Kamali summarizes,

Of the 350 legal verses in the Quran, known as ayat ayat al-ahkam, close to 140 relate to dogma and devotional matters, including such practical religious duties as ritual prayer, legal alms and other charities, fasting, pilgrimage, and so forth. Another seventy verses are devoted to marriage, divorce, paternity, child custody, inheritance, and bequests. Rules concerning commercial transactions, such as sale, lease, loan, usury, and mortgage, constitute the subject of another seventy verses. There are about thirty verses on crimes and penalties, [and] another thirty on justice, equality, evidence, citizens’ rights and duties, and consultation in government affairs, and above ten on economic matters.²

These 350 or so verses, then, will be our focus for the remainder of this program – in other words, once again, what the Qur’an actually says about what Muslims should, and shouldn’t do. I offered you an abridged history of Sharia and Fiqh upfront here to give you an idea of the ultimate importance of these scant 350 verses, which have been cited and cross referenced for thirteen centuries to serve many theological and legal agendas. Some of them, like al-Baqarah’s rules regarding pilgrimages, are compassionate and farsighted, as we’ll see in just a moment. Others are blunter and testier, reflecting, to some extent, the outlook of a minority population perennially forced to fight for its own survival. And all of them have roots in the prophetic career of Muhammad, a person who wore a great many proverbial hats during both the Meccan and Medinan periods, and who issued a remarkably wide and diverse body of rulings in order to keep the first Muslim community safe, harmonious, and devout.

Before we start looking at the Qur’an in detail, though, I want to make one final point. The legalistic materials in the Qur’an are, again, quite a small part of what the book contains. As scholar Feryal Salem writes, “A common misconception of the Islamic faith is that its legal ordinances take priority over its spiritual and ethical messages. They do not. An examination of some of the praiseworthy and blameworthy qualities highlighted in the Qur’an demonstrates quite the opposite. Islam in its scripture repeatedly emphasizes the importance of cultivating inner virtues of goodness and praises individuals who do so in a variety of ways.”³ In other words, the Qur’an does have some “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots.” But much more often, the Qur’an describes and commends virtues that everyone should cultivate – especially sabr, or patience; shukr, or gratitude; ikhlas, or sincerity; and sidq, or trustworthiness. These positive qualities, esteemed throughout the Qur’an, are held up often, in dozens and dozens of verses and in different ways, as the moral underpinnings of a just and orderly society. The Qur’an urges its readers not to be suspicious (49:12), not to speak ill (104:1) of one another, not to be conceited (4:36, 57:23) or sanctimonious (53:32), to speak respectfully to the poor (17:28), to slaves (4:36, 24:33), and to parents (17:23, 46:15); and to have religious disputations in a respectful manner (16:125, 29:46). These general directives for personal conduct, and stories that exemplify them, are far more plentiful in the Qur’an than legalistic materials – the book’s “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots.”

Still, there are some core dictates in the Qur’an, and it’s time that we take a look at them. I want to start with a few rulings in Surat al-Baqarah, or “The Cow.” The Qur’an’s second, and longest surah, following the very brief opening surah, is the first one that many of us go through when we read the book for ourselves, and in itself, Surat al-Baqarah contains a sizable amount of the Qur’an’s legalistic material. I’ll be quoting from a number of translations in this program, but unless otherwise noted, I’m once again quoting from the Oxford M.A.S. Abdel Haleem translation, and as always, chapters, verses, and footnotes can be found in this episode’s transcription at literatureandhistory.com. [music]

Qur’anic Verses on Pilgrimage and Fasting

The first commandment in the Tankah, or the Old Testament of the Bible, is in the Book of Exodus. It is, in the New Revised Standard Version, as follows “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them: for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me” (Ex 20:4-5).⁴ This is a familiar, if harsh, proscription in the Bible, and overall a representative part of what Muhammad would have known as shari‘at Musa, or the “path of Moses,” widely known in English as Mosaic Law, or the Torah. Legalistic materials were, in the year 610 CE, an integral part of Abrahamic scriptures, just as they had been in 610 BCE in ancient Jerusalem. The Old and New Testament told stories, contained poetry, and offered prophetic visions of things to come, but they also told you what to do, and they offered a sense of the consequences of righteous and unrighteous behavior. The Qur’an mentions the Mosaic covenant numerous times.⁵ And Qur’an follows this general model, stipulating what believers ought to do, and offering compelling reasons for following the rules.

The Qur’an, though, emerged almost six hundred years after the New Testament, and around 1,200 years after the Pentateuch. And the Qur’an’s law codes, though admittedly sometimes stern, are also, from time to time, more subtle and nuanced than those in the Bible. I’m going to read you three passages from Surat al-Baqarah or “The Cow.” These passages have to do with regulations surrounding foods that Muslims can eat, rules for correct deportment during pilgrimages, and rules related to alcohol and gambling. We’ll talk more about each of these divisions of Qur’anic law later, but I wanted to begin by reading you three passages that introduce what the book’s legalistic verses sound like. Here they are – this is a fairly long excerpt:

We have provided for you and be grateful to God, if it is Him that you worship. He has only forbidden you carrion, blood, pig’s meat, and animals over which any name other than God’s has been invoked. But if anyone is forced to eat such things by hunger, rather than desire or excess, he commits no sin: God is most merciful and forgiving. (2.172-3)

You who believe, fasting is prescribed for you, as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may be mindful of God. Fast on a specific number of days, but if one of you is ill, or on a journey, then on other days later. For those who can fast only with extreme difficulty, there is a way to compensate – feed a needy person. . .So any one of you who sees in that month should fast, and anyone who is ill or on a journey should make up for the lost days by fasting on other days later. God wants ease for you, not hardship. He wants you to complete the prescribed period and to glorify Him for having guided you, so that you may be thankful. (2.183-4,185)

Complete the pilgrimages, major and minor, for the sake of God. If you are prevented [from doing so], then [send] whatever offering for sacrifice you can afford, and do not shave your heads until the offering has reached the place of sacrifice. If any of you is ill, or has an ailment of the scalp, he should compensate by fasting, or feeding the poor, or offering sacrifice. (2.196)⁶

Now these are, again, legalistic materials, such as the ones we see in the Torah. But as you heard, all three passages offer leniency for believers enduring hardships. Don’t eat pork, but if you’re starving and have no choice, it’s okay. You need to fast for Ramadan, but if you’re sick or otherwise unable to, you can postpone the fasting, or feed a needy person. Make the pilgrimage to Mecca, but if you can’t, send something along for those who do. Shave your head for the pilgrimage, but if for some reason you can’t, then compensate by fasting, or by making gifts to the poor. It’s important to note, here, that this isn’t some later exegesis, like Judaism’s Mishna and Gemara in the Talmud, endeavoring to make scriptural mandates workable in the rough and tumble of real life. Some of the primary legalistic materials in the Qur’an are in and of themselves adaptable enough to have been put into practice with minimal interpretation or logistical problems, because they were farsighted and cogent to begin with.

One of the most famous legal proscriptions in Islam is that Muslims are not allowed to drink alcohol. On this subject, the same surah, Surat al-Baqarah says “They ask you [Prophet] about intoxicants and gambling: say, ‘There is great sin in both, and some benefit for people: the sin is greater than the benefit’” (2.219). The verse is hard to argue with. To be clear, though, the Qur’an is not insouciant and loose about rules all the time. Elsewhere (5.90-1) the Qur’an is clear that alcohol is bad news, and to be avoided by believers, period, and many junctures of the book similarly emphasize that rules are to be followed by all, without exceptions. Nonetheless, the legalistic materials in the Qur’an are, on average, carefully. The Qur’anic voice acknowledges that emergencies, illnesses, and other extenuating circumstances sometimes cause the most pious of us to step outside the lines. These verses that we’ve just heard, all from the second surah, were later revelations that Muhammad had, in Medina, the revelations of someone who had successfully led a diverse community through thick and thin, and so their broad-mindedness, if we take a historicist or biographical approach, makes a lot of sense.

So those verses from Surat al-Baqarah should give you an idea of how the Qur’an – in particular, the later Medinan Surahs, offers nuanced laws that sometimes include exemptions. Though the Qur’an’s legal materials are fairly short, they also frequently have enough clarity and subtlety to have allowed them to persist unchanged for the past thirteen centuries. Let’s look at a few more verses in which the Qur’an discusses rules for pilgrimages and fasting. We actually heard most of the Qur’an’s verses about fasting a moment ago – there’s one further verse that stipulates the times of fasting – specifically, “eat and drink until the white thread of dawn becomes distinct from the black. Then fast until nightfall” (2.187). This single, clear verse has offered instructions on when fasting should take place over the course of Ramadan and the month of Dhul Hijjah to believers ever since the life of Muhammad.

And speaking of Dhul Hijjah, more specific rules are offered for the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, which takes place in the twelfth month of the Islamic calendar. Muhammad’s Quraysh clan had, generations before his birth, been in charge of administrating the pilgrimage to Mecca, which had been a major pilgrimage site before Islam. In the ninth century biographies of Muhammad, the Hajj is at several junctures an important flashpoint of controversy between the new Muslim community and the old Quraysh hegemony, who are irked at Muhammad not only because of his ideology, but also because this ideology threatened the pilgrimage business off of which the Quraysh made considerable annual profits. Due to deep familial ties to the Kaaba and the rituals of the Hajj, then, and as the first Muslim, Muhammad was uniquely qualified to set out the rules for the Hajj in the Qur’an.

Perhaps most clearly of all, Surat Aali-Imran, the third surah, states that “Pilgrimage to the House is a duty owed to God by people who are able to undertake it” (3:97). Although there are exemptions, as we heard a moment ago, believers are in almost all cases expected to make the pilgrimage. During the pilgrimage, believers are required to exhibit a certain code of conduct. Specifically, the Qur’an says that during the Hajj, “There should be no indecent speech, misbehavior, or quarrelling for anyone undertaking the pilgrimage” (2:197). The Qur’an states that believers are not allowed to hunt for game during the Hajj, and emphasizes that pilgrims should more generally honor the existing rites and rituals long associated with the pilgrimage (5:1-2, 95).⁷ Offering more food-related pilgrimage rules, the Qur’an states that catching and eating seafood is permissible during the pilgrimage, emphasizing that those in a state of ritual purity are not to kill land animals.

The Qur’an describes parts of the Hajj in some degree of detail. Participants are required to perform certain rituals “on specified days” (22:28), and to “perform acts of cleansing, fulfill their vows, and circle around the Ancient House” (22:29), and later, animals are to be sacrificed near the Kaaba. Believers are allowed to walk between the hills of Safa and Marwa (2:158), a rite based on honoring Hagar’s search for water for her young son Ismail. The Qur’an requires that when Muslims come down from Mount Arafat during the pilgrimage, they must ask forgiveness from God (2:199). In the aftermath of the Hajj, the Qur’an emphasizes, “When you have completed your rites, remember God as much as you remember your own fathers, or even more” (2:200).

So, that’s a tour of what the Qur’an says about undertaking the Hajj. The book expects some fluency and compliance with the pre-existing rites of the Hajj that had existed before Islam. If you are familiar with the pilgrimage as it exists today, you know that there are a few other rites associated with the Hajj, most importantly, stoning the devil in Mina, that aren’t mentioned in the Qur’an, though this ancient rite is described in the biographer Ibn Ishaq (77). To reiterate a very simple point from earlier, the Qur’an and the hadiths are the nucleus of Shariah, but Fiqh, or later Islamic law, together with respect for ‘urf, or ancient custom, are also major parts of Islamic law, too. Thus, the Hajj that pilgrims embark on today is a product of, first, pre-Islamic rites related to the site’s association with the patriarch Abraham; second, Qur’anic directives we just heard; third, narratives from hadith literature and Prophetic biographies; and fourth, Fiqh, or the precise legal rules of later Islamic jurisprudence. This is a microcosm of how many Islamic legal customs have developed.

Now that we have a sense of the Qur’an’s rules related to fasting and pilgrimage, and the exceptions to some of those rules, let’s move on to another topic. The Hajj has been a characterizing feature of Islam for more than thirteen centuries, but another feature is Islamic prayer. From outlining the five daily prayers, to offering instructions on the correct state of mind and prostration for prayer, to discussing the prayers of various storied patriarchs from the Old Testament, the Qur’an has plenty to say about prayer, and how Muslims should undertake it. Let’s take a look at the central Qur’anic verses related to prayers and praying. [music]

Qur’anic Laws on Prayer

Among the many defining aspects of Islam are the five daily prayers – the Fajr prayer, at dawn; the Zuhr prayer, at noon; the Asr prayer, at midafternoon; the Maghrib prayer, at sunset; and the Isha prayer, at the moment the last light vanishes from the western sky. These prayers are the second of the five pillars of Islam, and they’ve been part of the bedrock of the religion since the life of Muhammad. In previous episodes, we learned from ancient biographies and hadith compilations written about Muhammad, the Prophet journeyed up to heaven from Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where Muhammad was first told by God that the Muslims needed to pray 50 times each day.⁸ Subsequently, Muhammad asked Moses for advice on the subject, and Moses told Muhammad that 50 times was far too many – Moses himself had trouble getting his people to do anything pious consistently. Moses recommended that Muhammad return to the highest level of heaven and speak with God again, and subsequently, the number of required daily prayers was first reduced to 40, and then, eventually, to five.

This story is not in the Qur’an. Surat al-Isra, or “The Night Journey,” the Qur’an’s 17th surah, according to traditional interpretations, briefly describes the Prophet’s visionary journey to Temple Mount, and then Surat an-Najm, or “The Star,” has a short account of Muhammad’s ascent to heaven and vision of the angel Gabriel and a heavenly tree. However, the surahs of the Qur’an themselves do not contain the standard Islamic account of how Muhammad first learned of the five daily prayers. The Qur’an, however, does have numerous verses that recommend multiple prayers per day, and they broadly line up with standard Islamic practice today. Here are those verses.

The Qur’an directs believers to, “[C]elebrate God’s glory in the evening, in the morning – praise is due to Him in the heavens and the earth – in the late afternoon, and at midday” (30:17-18). At several junctures, the Qur’an recommends glorifying God before the rising of the sun, and after it sets, as in this verse: “Wait patiently [Prophet] for your Lord’s judgement; you are under Our watchful eye. Celebrate the praise of your Lord when you rise. Glorify Him at night and at the fading of the stars” (52:48-9). Similarly, a different surah says, “[P]erform the regular prayers in the period from the time the sun is past its [peak] till the darkness of the night, and [recite] the Qur’an at dawn – dawn recitation is always witnessed – and during the night wake up and pray, as an extra offering of your own” (17:78-9). Waking up at night and praying, rather than sleeping, is also recommended from time to time, as when Muhammad is told, “[Prophet], keep up the prayer at both ends of the day, and during parts of the night, for good things drive bad away” (11:114).⁹ There is enough evidence in the surahs of the Qur’an, in these and other verses, to conclude that the five daily prayers were interspersed throughout the day in the exilic community of Medina in the 620s much as they are in modern Islamic societies. Daily prayers, the Qur’an states on a general level, “are obligatory for the believers at prescribed times” (4:103), and the prayers, like the Hajj, were intended to remind Muslims to be reverent to God (4:103).

The Qur’an actually says quite a bit more about prayer than that one needs to do it multiple times a day, and that it should fill each believer’s mind with a fresh gratitude toward God. The surahs set expectations for basic deportment during prayer. Believers, the Qur’an mandates, are to “dress well whenever you are at prayer” (7:31), with “dress well” alternately translated as “Put on your adornment.”¹⁰ A longer verse in Surat an-Nisa, the fourth surah, outlines other basic expectations of those at prayer. The Penguin Classics Dawood translation renders this verse as,

Believers, do not approach your prayers when you are drunk, until you know what you are saying; nor when you are unclean – unless you are travelling the road – until you have washed yourselves. If you are sick or on a journey, or if, when you have relieved yourselves or had intercourse with women, you can find no water, take some clean sand and rub your faces and your hands with it. God will surely pardon and forgive. (4:43)¹¹

You can see, again, there that while Qur’anic injunctions expect very specific deportment, they also, often, make allowances for the lumps and bumps of real life. Elsewhere, the Qur’an emphasizes that believers praying under duress – in places that are unsafe, for instance – will not be blamed for shortening their prayers. With 35 prayers expected per week, and a great many more per month and year, the Qur’an acknowledges that sometimes, believers will have to wash themselves with whatever is available or hurry a bit if they don’t feel secure. In addition to requiring believers to dress respectfully, be sober, and wash themselves clean prior to prayer, the Qur’an also prescribes prostration for Muslim prayers.

Muslims, the Qur’an proclaims, are to “bow down and prostrate themselves” (9:112) during prayer, and elsewhere, “bow down, prostrate yourselves, worship your Lord, and do good so that you may succeed” (22:77). Perhaps most prominently, Surat al-Sajdah, or “Prostration,” an early Meccan surah, tells readers that “The only people who truly believe in Our messages are those who, when they are reminded of them, bow down in worship, celebrate their Lord’s praises, and do not think themselves above this” (32:15). In fact, prostration is the natural condition of all created things, the Qur’an emphasizes, in a verse rich with figurative language: “Do the [disbelievers] not observe the things that God has created, how their shadows move, right and left, [prostrating] themselves to God obediently?” (16:48).¹² The verse pictures the physical phenomena of the world bowing down, just like pious believers, around the clock, with their shadows moving around them as time passes. Yet believers are, of course, not to bow down to the phenomena around them, such as animists and polytheists do, but only to God. As the Qur’an puts it, “The night, the day, the sun, the moon, are only a few of His signs. Do not bow down in worship to the sun or the moon, but bow down to God who created them” (41:37). In a final verse related to prostration during prayer, the Qur’an describes Muslims as those “kneeling and prostrating, seeking God’s bounty and His good pleasure: on their faces they bear the marks of their prostrations” (48:29). These are important Qur’anic verses related to correct deportment during prayers. The Arabic words for “Islam” and “Muslim,” إسلام and مُسْلِم, come from the very ancient Semitic triconsonantal root SLM (س-ل-م), or in the Arabic alphabet, siin, laam, miim, with “Islam” and “Muslim” most commonly translated today as “submission” and “one who submits.” Prostration during prayer, then, is described often throughout the Qur’an as a charactering act of those who submit, and at a few junctures the book draws distinctions (3:113, 22:26, 25:64; 39:9) between those who stand to pray, and those who bow down. Submitting as a collective to God during daily prayers, in the Medinan exilic community of 622, just as today, has always been a part of Islam.

From time to time, the Qur’an offers specific verses in the form of short prayers. These prayers are often rhetorical interjections, as when Muhammad is told, “Say:” – in other words, when divine revelation gives Muhammad specific words of reverence to utter, or words of reverence to pass on to the believers around him. These prayers in the Qur’an, while not liturgically prescribed for specific moments, are nonetheless part of its general injunctions toward prayer. Collectively, they inculcate a sense of humbleness and gratitude toward God, as the book does more generally. A representative prayer, from Surat al-Baqarah, is “Lord, do not burden us with more than we have strength to bear. Pardon us, forgive us, and have mercy on us. You are our Protector, so help us against the disbelievers” (2.286). A longer prayer from Surat Aali-Imran or “The Family of Imran,” the third surah of the Qur’an, is as follows.

Our Lord! You have not created all this without purpose – You are far above that! – so protect us from the torment of the Fire. Our Lord! You will truly humiliate those You commit to the Fire. The evildoers have no one to help them. Our Lord! Forgive us our sins, wipe out our bad deeds, and grant that we join the righteous when we die. Our Lord! Bestow upon us all that You have promised through Your messengers – do not humiliate us on the Day of Resurrection – You never break Your promise. (3:191-4)

This and other Qur’anic prayers (3:8, 3:16, 59:10) ask for forgiveness from God and offer gratitude for God’s protection and guidance. Direct, humble, and piercing, the Qur’an’s collectivistic prayers exemplify what the earliest Muslims were taught to say by Muhammad himself. The Qur’an adds that believers should “not be too loud in your prayer, or too quiet, but seek a middle way” (17:110), and further, that Muslims should mean what they say in their prayers: “woe to those who pray but are heedless of their prayer; those who are all show and forbid common kindnesses” (107:4-7).

In addition to stipulating that prayer ought to take place multiple times each day, that believers must prostrate themselves, and the Qur’an’s intermittent examples of prayers, the book also describes the main Islamic gathering day. Surat al-Jumu‘ah, or “The Day of Congregation,” closes with instructions for the Friday congregation still standard in Islam today. These instructions are as follows, in the Penguin Tarif Khalidi translation:

O believers, when the call is made for prayer on Congregation Day, hasten to the remembrance of God, and leave your commerce aside: this is best for you, if only you knew. When prayer is ended, disperse in the land and seek the bounty of God, and mention God often – perhaps you will prosper. When they spot some commerce or frivolity, they rush towards it and leave you standing.

     Say: ‘What is with God is better than frivolity or commerce, and God is the best of providers.’ (62:9-11)¹³

It’s a memorable set of verses in the Qur’an, in that Muhammad seems to reflect that after his khutba or sermon at the Friday prayer, believers were quick to hurry off to the marketplace or to enjoy some shopping, or other recreations. To anyone in any clergy listening to this episode, take heart, if you’ve ever felt melancholy that your congregation was all too quick to hustle off to their weekly amusements after you preached your heart out, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, may have felt the same way once or twice, too. [music]

Qur’anic Laws on Charity

So that takes us through the Qur’an’s legalistic materials on fasting during Ramadan and the Hajj, the Hajj pilgrimage itself, and the Qur’anic injunctions on the five daily prayers, and the Friday congregation. As you may know, there are five pillars of Islam – these are the Shahada, or Muslim statement of faith, the Salah, or five daily prayers, the zakah, or almsgiving, the Sawm, or fasting during Ramadan, and the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca. We have actually covered Qur’anic injunctions on three of these five pillars already – again, the five daily prayers, fasting, and the Hajj. Let’s go onto a fourth – zakah, or almsgiving.

Just as in the Tanakh and New Testament, there are dozens of injunctions throughout the Qur’an for believers to give money to the needy. Islam, like Christianity before it, had an ideological agenda that was financially as well as theologically revolutionary, and the Prophet’s egalitarian vision of believers united under God was as disruptive to the old Meccan social order as it was profoundly advantageous for Islam’s success in the long run. So let’s explore what the Qur’an has to say about charity, and the opposite of charity – hording wealth for oneself.

The Qur’an has a memorable metaphor for greedy people. The book states that “Those who are miserly with what God has granted them out of His grace should not think that it is good for them; on the contrary, it is bad for them. Whatever they meanly withhold will be hung around their necks on the Day of Resurrection” (3:180). A different surah also has chastening verses for those who hoard their wealth: “There is the one who is miserly, who is self-satisfied, who denies goodness – [God] shall smooth his way towards hardship and his wealth will not help him as he falls” (92:8-11). Elsewhere, the Qur’an makes the common Abrahamic observation that wealth and material prosperity do not accompany one to the afterlife (35:8), later asserting that “Those who are saved from their own meanness will be the prosperous ones” (64:16). While the Qur’an describes great wealth as more of a curse than a blessing, the book also emphasizes that spending too much is not the correct path either, describing “those who are neither wasteful nor niggardly when they spend, but keep to a just balance” (25:67) as the most favored by God. The opposite of greed, of course, is charity, and the Qur’an has an enormous number of verses urging believers to give – to give to orphans, beggars, destitute kindred, travelers, captives, and more generally, the needy.

Most often in the Qur’an, almsgiving and charity are described as part of the regular, recurrent duty of the believer (2:43, 2:110, 2:277, 5:12, 5:55, 9:18, 9:71, 21:73, 22:41, 22:78, 24:37, 27:3, 31:4, 41:7, 98:5). Muslims are told again and again that not just charity, but regular charity, along with prayer, are the bedrock duties of believers, the Qur’an at one point stating that not merely giving, but giving “out of what you cherish” (3:92) is required. The surahs stress that wealth and prosperity come to believers through the grace of God (4:39, 36:47, 57:7), and so hoarding is an act of spiteful selfishness. God owns everything, ultimately, a late surah says, and he will inherit everything, and trying to claw onto worldly possessions thus just doesn’t make sense (57:10). The Qur’an, then, shows contempt for greed as something impious and outright nonsensical.

A long and soaring passage from Surat al-Baqarah contains what is probably the Qur’an’s most sustained statement on charity and why believers must do it for the right reasons. At other junctures, the Qur’an castigates “[those] who spend their wealth to show off” (4:38), and states that giving to charity in secret, rather than making a spectacle of it, is most preferable to God (2:271). Surat al-Baqarah, again the Qur’an’s longest, has a string of verses that mandate almsgiving just as they mandate doing it for the right reason. So here’s a longer – perhaps two minute – quote from Surat al-Baqarah, in the Penguin Dawood translation:

Those that give their wealth for the cause of God can be compared to a grain of corn which brings forth seven ears, each bearing a hundred grains. God gives more and more to whom He will; God is munificent and all-knowing.
Those that give their wealth for the cause of God and do not follow their almsgiving with taunts and insults shall be rewarded by their Lord; they shall have nothing to fear or to regret.
A kind word with forgiveness is better than charity followed by insult. God is self-sufficient and gracious.
Believers, do not nullify your almsgiving with taunts and mischief-making, like him who spends his wealth only to be seen by people, and believes neither in God nor in the Last Day. He can be compared to a rock covered with earth: a shower falls upon it and leaves it hard and bare. They shall gain nothing from their works; and God does not guide the unbelievers.
But those that give their wealth from a desire to please God and to reassure their own souls can be compared to an orchard on a hillside: if a shower falls upon it, it yields up twice its normal produce; and if no shower falls upon it, it’s watered by the dew. God is cognizant of what you do.
Would any one of you, being well advanced in age with helpless children to support, wish to have an orchard planted with palm-trees, vines, and all manner of fruits, and watered by running brooks – only to be blasted and consumed by a fiery whirlwind?
Thus God makes plain to you His revelations, so that you may give thought.
You believers! Give in alms from the wealth you have lawfully earned and from that which We have brought out of the earth for you; not worthless things which you yourselves would but reluctantly accept. Know that God is self-sufficient and worthy of praise. (2:261-7)¹⁴

That was again the Qur’an, Surat al-Baqarah, or “The Cow,” verses 261-7, in the Penguin Dawood translation. The Qur’an, there, tells readers to give, then, because charity is part of the correct and orderly system of divine will, and not because one wants to distinguish oneself as a philanthropist. And as with so many of the other injunctions the Qur’an offers in its legalistic sections, the book states that God is compassionate to those who have nothing to give. The book says, “[O]ffer something in charity. . .that is better for you and purer. If you do not have the means, God is most forgiving and merciful” (58:12-13).

The Qur’anic directives to give to charity are some of the most compassionate and broadminded verses in Earth’s canonized scriptures. They are also, as we just heard, philosophically complex. The Qur’an differentiates between giving for show, and giving because it’s the right thing to do, bringing to mind the early Christian dichotomy between faith and good works. Let me read one more quote from Surat al-Baqarah, again the second surah and one which contains a great many Qur’anic ideas in just thirty pages. Surat al-Baqarah, on the subject of charity, but more broadly on the subject of being a good person, states, in the Oxford Haleem translation:

Goodness does not consist in turning your face towards East or West. The truly good are those who believe in God and the Last Day, in the angels, the Scripture, and the prophets; who give away some of their wealth, however much they cherish it, to their relatives, to orphans, the needy, travelers and beggars, and to liberate those in bondage; those who keep up the prayer and pay the prescribed alms; who keep pledges whenever they make them; who are steadfast in misfortune, adversity, and times of danger. These are the ones who are true, as it is they who are aware of God. (2.177)

It’s quite a nice verse, in my opinion, and its unsurprisingly in accordance with biblical teachings. In 2 Corinthians, in the New Testament, Saint Paul famously wrote that “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3.6), a simple comparison analogous to what we just heard in Surat al-Baqarah – don’t get too caught up in the nitty gritty of law, but believe, be generous, and be an honest, steady person, through thick and thin.

So that takes us through Qur’anic injunctions on some of the core tenets of Islam – prayers and daily prayers, fasting, the pilgrimage, and charity. The Qur’an has many other directives besides these, though. While it was and still is an inspirational text, urging faith in God and a harmonious universe, it also served as a constitution as its verses were revealed to Muhammad over the final two decades of his life – a constitution that ultimately covered a broad range of topics relevant to almost any civil society. What I want to consider next is what the Qur’an says about what we might call family life – marriage, divorce, paternity, child custody, inheritance, and bequests. Many Qur’anic laws on these topics more or less followed Late Antique Arabian customs. Others were radical, and even revolutionary in the context of the early seventh century. [music]

Qur’anic Laws on Marriage and Dowries

The diverse tribes of western Arabia, when Muhammad was alive, practiced polygamy. In fact the word “polygyny” is more accurate, polygyny meaning men marrying multiple wives. Premodern societies like Muhammad’s suffered from high infant mortality rates, and polygyny was a means of consolidating tribal and commercial partnerships and stabilizing property holdings. Among the aristocracy, in particular, polygyny ensured that property transfer could take place from fathers to legitimate male heirs. The Qur’an, accepting polygyny as an ordinary part of society, sets out numerous regulations on how marriage and divorce should work.

Marriage, in the Qur’an, is first and foremost described as a divinely ordained institution, and one designed for human happiness. The Qur’an states, “Another of [God’s] signs is that He created spouses from among yourselves for you to live with in tranquility: He ordained love and kindness between you” (30:21). God, the Qur’an says, created marriage just as he created humanity (25:54). Marriage is not just a terrestrial arrangement, but one that persists in the afterlife. A surah describes devout people in paradise, “seated on couches in the shade” (36:55), and more ornately, a later surah bids believers, “‘Enter Paradise, you and your spouses: you will be filled with joy.’ Dishes and goblets of gold will be passed around them with all that their souls desire and their eyes delight in” (43:70-1). In heaven, and on earth, husbands and wives are understood as “[close] as garments to you, as you are to them” (2:187). Inasmuch as the Qur’an understands marriage as part of God’s bounty, and designed for stability and human happiness, the Qur’an also sets forth numerous rules regarding marriage. The first of these rules has to do with who men can, and cannot marry.

The Qur’an explicitly endorses polygyny, though polygyny is very rare in the Islamic world today. Surat an-Nisa, or “Women,” which contains many regulations related to marriage, states that “you may marry whichever. . .women seem good to you, two, three, or four. If you fear that you cannot be equitable [to them], then marry only one” (4:3). Though this pronouncement sounds quite open ended, the Qur’an qualifies it with a considerable number of additional rules. The same Surah emphasizes that husbands with multiple wives must try to treat them with parity: “You will never be able to treat your wives with equal fairness, however much you may desire to do so, but do not ignore one wife altogether, leaving her suspended [between marriage and divorce]” (4:129). And in addition to telling husbands to treat wives equally, the Qur’an imposes numerous restrictions on the women whom men are actually allowed to marry. Men are not allowed to marry the ex-wives of their fathers (4:22), nor to marry their mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, nieces, wet-nurses or foster sisters alongside whom they’ve nursed, nor their stepdaughters, nor two sisters, nor the wives of their sons, nor women who are already married (4:22-4). A well-known verse in (33:37) states that men may marry the former wives of their adopted sons. This verse is well-known because Muhammad married his adopted son’s wife Zaynab in the year 625, and the Medinan revelation likely dates to this period.

Moving on, marriage, in the Qur’an, requires a dowry. To state the obvious, Late Antique Arabia was a patriarchal society in which women had far less earning potential, and so dowries were designed to offer brides and their families financial security when a marriage was agreed on. The Qur’an consistently emphasizes that a dowry is a necessary part of a marriage contract, although the logistics of a dowry can be negotiated between a bride and groom. The Qur’an tells believers to “Give women their bridal gift upon marriage, though if they are happy to give up some of it for you, you may enjoy it with a clear conscience” (4:4). Later, in the same Surah, the Qur’an adds, “If you wish to enjoy women [through marriage], give them their bride-gift – this is obligatory – though if you should choose mutually, after fulfilling this obligation, to do otherwise [with the bride-gift], you will not be blamed” (4:24). The Qur’an, then, enjoins readers to enter into mutually advantageous marital partnerships and to negotiate the financial terms of these partnerships with one another as needed. Surat an-Nisa, again “Women,” perhaps most representatively, contains these verses about how marriage is supposed to work – this is the Penguin Tarif Khalidi translation.

O believers, it is not licit for you to inherit women against their will, nor must you coerce them so as to take possession of part of what you had given them, unless they commit manifest adultery. Live with them in kindness. And if you come to loathe them, perhaps you may loathe something in which God places abundant good. If you desire to substitute one wife in place of another, and you had given the first a heap of riches, take nothing back from it – would you dare take it back falsely and in manifest sin? And how can you take it back when you have been intimate with each other, and your wives have secured from you a most solemn pledge? (4:19-21)¹⁵

In short, then, the Qur’an expects reciprocal honesty in marital partnerships, and the book insists that dowries, once paid, are not to be taken back. Also in relation to dowries, the Qur’an frowns on extramarital sexual relationships (4:25, 5:5), proclaiming that believers must pursue unions with women only after a dowry has been paid and a marriage has been contracted.

There are more Qur’anic rules regarding marriage than these basic ones. While, as we heard a moment ago, the Qur’an outlaws marriage with certain close kin, the Qur’an also contains rules related to the economic status and religion of prospective marital partners. While the book most often describes Muslim brides as suitable for Muslim husbands, the Qur’an also states that men can marry “chaste, believing. . .women as well as chaste women of the people who were given the Scripture before you, as long as you have given them their bride-gifts and married them, not taken them as lovers or secret mistresses” (5:5). This is an interesting verse, by the way, hierarchizing Jewish and Christian woman above pagan ones, and we’ll come back to it a bit later. While Muslim men in the Qur’an are permitted to marry Jewish and Christian women, the book also contains rules for what happens when pagan women convert to Islam, and when Muslim women become pagans. When, for instance, a formerly pagan married woman has converted to Islam, the Qur’an says that it is permissible to marry her as long as her dowry has been paid to her former and presumably pagan husband (60:10). When the inverse happens – in other words, when a Muslim woman turns pagan, and leaves her Muslim husband for a pagan one, the dowry that the pagan husband pays must go to the Muslim husband (60:11). In each case, believers are required to give a dowry, or receive a dowry, when a bride is gained or lost due to a religious conversion.

Pagan women, or idolaters, are not eligible as spouses. In fact, the Qur’an proclaims that “a believing slave woman is certainly better than an idolatress, even though she may please you” (2:221). Believing slaves, throughout the Qur’an’s surahs on women, are described as potential brides for Muslim men – particularly Muslim men who cannot afford to marry free Muslim women. The Qur’an says, “If any of you does not have the means to marry a believing free woman, then marry a believing slave – God knows best [the depth of] your faith: you are [all] part of the same family – so marry them with their people’s consent and their proper bride-gifts, [making them] married women, not adulteresses or lovers” (4:25). Believing slaves, the surahs make clear at several points, are eligible marital partners (4:3, 24:32).

Surat an-Nisa 34

While the Qur’an contains these rulings on whom Muslim men may, and may not marry, and how marriage contracts ought to proceed, the surahs also have rules related to marital life. And while most of what we’ve heard from the Qur’an so far has been relatively uncontroversial, as we come to verse 34 of the fourth surah Surat an-Nisa, we arrive at one of the more contentious directives in the entire book. Here it is, in the HarperOne Study Quran translation.

Men are the upholders and maintainers of women by virtue of that in which God has favored some of them above others and by virtue of their spending from their wealth. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in [their husbands’] absence what God has guarded. As for those [wives] whom you fear discord and animosity, admonish them, then leave them in their beds, then strike them. (4:34)¹⁶

The final sentence is a somewhat gentler translation than the one the older Penguin Dawood translation offers, which is “As for those [wives] from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them, and forsake them in beds apart, and beat them.”¹⁷ This verse, which definitely advocates domestic violence, has been subject to analysis for a long time. There is an Asbab Annuzul, or “occasion of revelation” behind it that puts the revelation in context.¹⁸ Commentators have been quick to point out that Muhammad himself is never reported to have struck any of his own wives, and further, the way that the verse describes the physical violence in question has been translated very differently, with the Arabic word idribuhunna being rendered as “strike,” “beat,” “hit,” and even “discipline them ‘gently.’”¹⁹ Modern Islamic scholarship written by Muslim women, like Ayesha Chaudhry, has engaged with this verse in particular, and it’s been at the center of various feminist criticisms as well as feminist reappraisals of the Qur’an and egalitarianism.²⁰ I’m not a specialist on the subject myself, but, having read the Qur’an several times, I’ll say that verse 34 of Surat an-Nisa is a bit jarring when you first read it, as the Qur’an, otherwise, for its time and place, at least, seems to advocate relatively respectful and fair-minded treatment of women by their fiancés and husbands. Men are, as we would expect from a seventh-century text, in charge of marriages in the Qur’an, and in one Qur’anic revelation, Muhammad, frustrated at a wife who couldn’t keep a secret, assures two of his gossiping wives that God might replace them with better ones (66:5). However, though men rule over wives in the Qur’an, and sometimes rule over them with violence, on a general level, the surahs advocate fairly contracted marriages, assume romantic love and passion will result from marriage, and issue protections to safeguard women’s property in the event of a divorce.

Qur’anic Directives on Divorce

Speaking of divorce, let’s go over the basics of what the Qur’an says on this subject. Contrary to the verse we heard a moment ago which seems to counsel abuse, Surat an-Nisa also proclaims that “If a wife fears animosity or desertion from her husband, there is no blame upon them should they come to an accord, for an accord is better” (4:128).²¹ The same surah, a moment later, decrees that “if a husband and wife do separate, God will provide for each out of His plenty” (4:130). During the complexities of divorce proceedings, the Qur’an tells men to be civil to wives from whom they are separating. Surat al-Talaq, or “Divorce,” orders men to “House the wives you are divorcing according to your means, wherever you house yourselves, and do not harass them so as to make their lives difficult” (65:6).²² While the Qur’an sees divorce as a necessary social institution, the Qur’an also outlines protocol for how divorce ought to take place.

The Qur’an’s rules for divorce are ultimately geared to make sure that it’s not undertaken too hastily, and that all parties are taken care of after a divorce and the remarriages that may ensue. In Pre-Islamic Arabia, according to tradition, divorce could happen at the whim of a husband instantaneously.²³ The Qur’an put brakes on this process, though, requiring a waiting period for both husbands and wives. Men are required to wait for four months after announcing that they’re divorcing their wives, and to renounce sexual intercourse with them during these four months (2:226). After this waiting period, a divorce can take place, or a reconciliation can take place. A reconciliation involves specific rules that have to be followed. Friends of couples are advised to abet reconciliations (4:35). Men who determine to divorce their wives and then end up changing their minds are required to pay a penance – to free a slave, or to fast, or to feed the hungry, depending on their financial resources (58:3-4). And just as the Qur’an stipulates protocol for a reconciliation, the book also describes how a divorce should proceed.

The surahs recommend getting arbiters, or witnesses, to help a couple navigate the challenges of a divorce (65:2), and elsewhere, that a family member of the bride and a family member of the groom should be selected to possibly help the troubled couple reconcile (4:35). When reconciliation is impossible, the Qur’an issues general regulations on alimony, proclaiming that “Divorced women shall. . .have such maintenance as is considered fair: this is a duty for those who are mindful of God” (2:241). In particular, husbands are obligated to pay to support the care of pregnant wives they divorce, and breastfeeding infants (65:6-7). Additionally, husbands, unless some calamity is afoot, are not allowed to take back things that they have given wives over the course of a marriage (2:229). Specifically, men who are divorcing a wife in order to remarry a new one, in particular, are required to let the wife whom they are divorcing keep her dowry (4:20), and men who take back a dowry after a marriage has been consummated are, in the Qur’an’s words, guilty of “[an] unjust and a blatant sin” (4:21). Divorced women are required to wait for three menstrual cycles prior to remarrying (2:228, 65:4), with the aim of making certain that they are not pregnant from their former husbands. There are other, more detailed rules having to do with divorces from unconsummated marriages, and with remarriages after multiple divorces, and alimony protocol for men and women of different income brackets, but what you’ve just heard summarizes most of what the Qur’an has to say about marriage and divorce.

One related topic we haven’t yet discussed is the Qur’an’s rules on adultery. The book describes adultery, on a general level, as “an outrage, and an evil path” (17:32). Almost everything the Qur’an has to say about adultery is in Surat an-Nur, the 24th surah. Here are the Qur’anic verses on the subject of adultery, in the Penguin Tarif Khalidi translation:

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, provided you believe in God and the Last Day. And let their punishment be witnessed by a group of believers.
     The adulterer shall marry none but an adulteress or an idolatress; and the adulteress shall marry none but an adulterer or an idolater. But this is forbidden to believers.

Those who falsely accuse married women of adultery, and fail to produce four witnesses, flog them eighty lashes and never thereafter accept their witness. These are the dissolute.
     Except for those who later repent and reform their ways, for God is All-Forgiving, Compassionate to each.

Those who accuse their wives of adultery, and have no witnesses but themselves, let each of them witness four times by God that he is telling the truth, and a fifth time that the curse of God shall fall upon him if he is a liar. They are then to ward off punishment from her if she testifies four times by God that he is a liar, and a fifth time that God’s wrath shall fall upon her if he is telling the truth. (24:2-9)²⁴

While these verses are insufficient to constitute a full law code on adultery, you can see that there is some degree of egalitarianism behind them. A fair amount of proof is required to convict a person of adultery, false accusations are criminalized, and punishments are symmetrical for men and women alike. While adultery is certainly anathemized in the Qur’an, it is not met with capital punishment, as is the case in Mosaic Law in the Bible (Leviticus 20:10), and enough cautions are built in that prosecution of adultery could not proceed unchecked in early Islamic history.

So that’s a summary of the Qur’anic dictates on marriage, divorce, and adultery. The Qur’anic regulations on the subject are straightforward lists of rules consonant with Abrahamic and more generally Late Antique norms, assuming that men are the sovereigns of households and addressing family law explicitly to male readers. Now that we’ve learned about what the Qur’an has to say on marriage, divorce, and adultery, let’s go on to explore the rest of what it says on family law – specifically, children and inheritance rights. [music]

Qur’anic Laws on Children and Inheritance

The Qur’an sees children, boys and girls alike, as blessings to parents. The book condemns pagan practices of child sacrifice to idols (6:137), and an apocalyptic vision in a later surah imagines “the baby girl buried alive. . .asked for what sin she was killed” (81:8-9), alluding to the pagan Arab practice of killing girls at birth.²⁵ Female infanticide, practiced widely in antiquity for purposes of financial prosperity, is condemned in the Qur’an, which holds that God grants male and female children to whomever God chooses (42:49), and castigates pagan Arabs for worshipping the daughters of God and then killing their own (16:58-9). Not sharing the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin, the Qur’an states that “It is God who brought you out of your mothers’ wombs knowing nothing, and gave you hearing and sight and minds, so that you might be thankful” (16:78), and emphatically states that killing newborns out of financial desperation is murder, and as loathsome as any other murder in God’s eyes (6:151). With an eye on the helplessness and vulnerability of children, then, and also the relative vulnerability of widows, the Qur’an sets out some specific rules on how inheritance should work.

The Qur’an’s laws on inheritance are revolutionary and often misunderstood. In a sentence, the Qur’an issued a radical proclamation for its time and place – that wives, daughters, and sisters could and should inherit money from their deceased male family members, but at the same time, the Qur’an stipulated that women would inherit less than their brothers, uncles, and so on. Let’s take a look at the details. Surat an-Nisa, again, “Women,” announces that “Men shall have a share in what their parents and closest relatives leave, and women shall have a share in what their parents and closest relatives leave, whether the legacy be small or large: this is ordained by God” (4:7).²⁶ The symmetrical phrasing here boldly announced something new in Late Antique Arabia – bereaved widows, sisters, and other women would receive discretionary inheritance money, whereas previously they became the wards of male relatives.²⁷ This proclamation evidently caused some commotion among the believers of Medina, who were unaccustomed to women being able to inherit property.²⁸ Subsequent verses get very specific about the percentage of an estate that goes to different categories of heirs. Let’s hear the Qur’anic laws on this subject – this is the HarperOne Study Quran translation of Surat an-Nisa, verses 11-12 – two long, complex, and heavily discussed verses.

God enjoins upon you concerning your children: [to] the male a share equal to that of two females; but if there are only daughters, two or more, then unto them is two-thirds of what he leaves; if only one, then unto her a half. And unto his parents – each of the two – a sixth of what he leaves if he has a child; but if he has no child and his parents are his [only] heirs, then [to] his mother a third; and if he has brothers, then [to] his mother a sixth, after paying any bequest he may have bequeathed or any debt. . .And [to] you a half of what your wives leave, if they have no child, but if they have a child, then [to] you a fourth of what they leave, after paying any bequest they may have bequeathed or any debt. And [to] them a fourth of what you leave if you have no child, but if you have a child, then [to] them an eighth of what you leave, after paying any bequest you might have bequeathed or any debt. If a man or woman leaves no direct heir, but has a brother or sister, then [to] each of the two a sixth; but if they are more than two, they share equally a third. (4:11-12)²⁹

Let me break that down to you, as it’s dense to read, let alone listen to in a podcast, as you’re probably doing other stuff simultaneously right now. First of all, when a man dies, most importantly, all of his relatives, by Qur’anic law, receive a share of his estate. The fact that women were included as heirs, once again, and heirs who would receive money for their own discretionary spending, was a revolutionary aspect of Qur’anic law when it emerged. However, as you likely noticed, female heirs, in Surat an-Nisa, don’t receive as much money as their male counterparts. Specifically, sons receive twice the parental inheritance money that daughters do in the event of a father’s death, and husbands receive twice the inheritance money that wives do in the event of a spousal death. Obviously, there is some numerical inequality here. Apologists for these verses emphasize that men in Late Antique Arabia were required by law and custom to provide for and care for their families, and so men needed the larger quantity of inheritance money, whereas women could be expected to put their inheritance money away for future use. And while there is likely thus some reasoning behind the Qur’an’s inequitable inheritance laws, some of the book’s inheritance laws are equitable to begin with. As we heard a moment ago in that dense passage, brothers and sisters of a departed sibling receive equal portions of the deceased’s estate, and parents of a departed son each receive a sixth of the son’s possessions.³⁰ To be clear, the Qur’an overall outlines a patriarchal social order apiece with the earlier Abrahamic religions and the ancient world more generally. Nonetheless, its inheritance laws are considered by most to be a solid step forward from the pre-Islamic civilizations of west Arabia.

So, we’ve covered a lot of the legalistic materials of the Qur’an in this program, so far, and we’ve taken a fairly comprehensive look at the book’s mandates related to pilgrimage, fasting, prayer, charity, marriage, divorce, and inheritance laws. We’ll cover more in a moment, but let’s pause for just a second and remember what we learned about Shariah and Fiqh earlier in this program. When we think about Abrahamic legal materials, we often think of “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not” – a rigid list of dictates that is dogmatically enforced by a clergy. Some fundamentalist societies, including some modern Islamic ones, are set up this way, with religious laws lashed against the public by theocratic regimes. I hope from what you’ve heard so far, though, it’s clear that Shariah and Fiqh are, like the Talmud and the patristic literature of Christianity, not monolithic, but instead, later leaves and branches that grew out of scriptural trunks. We’ve heard a lot of directives in this show so far, but, considering that what the Qur’an has to say about inheritance only takes up a page or so in total, as you can imagine, later legal scholars had to do a lot careful thinking to roll out the Qur’an’s directives into the Umayyad and Abbasid empires and the Islamic civilizations that followed them.

Let’s move on, now, from the private world of family life to the public world – the public world of the street, the caravan trail, the souk, and the town square. The Qur’an has plenty of rulings on how public life and commercial transactions ought to take place, and since they’re written in a holy scripture revered by hundreds of millions of people, all of them are fantastically important. [music]

Qur’anic Laws on Trade, Lending, and Usury

It’s time to talk about the Qur’an and trade. On the whole, the Qur’an has a somewhat cautious, but overall approving attitude toward commercial interactions. The book tells readers, “You who believe, do not wrongfully consume each other’s wealth but trade by mutual consent” (4:29). The trading in question, as far as the Qur’an is concerned, must be carried out in a way that is aboveboard and documented. The great second surah, Surat al-Baqarah, requires that “when you contract a debt for a stated term, put it down in writing: have a scribe write it down justly between you. . .Do not disdain to write the debt down, be it small or large, along with the time it falls due: this is. . .more likely to prevent doubts arising between you. . .But if the merchandise is there and you hand it over, there is no blame on you if you do not write it down. Have witnesses present whenever you trade with one another” (2:282). The rules there are commonsensical. Document debts with the use of a scribe. If it’s a commercial transaction that’s completed in one session, having witnesses there is a good idea. The Qur’an also states that a guardian is necessary when a debtor has a mental ailment, so as to look out for that debtor’s interest, and that while two men are ideal as witnesses to a transaction, two women can substitute for one of the two men, “so that if one of the two women should forget the other can remind her” (2:282). The sense here may be that women have less business experience than men, but let’s stay on topic of what the Qur’an generally has to say about trade and business.

While the Qur’an has a sanguine disposition toward business, the book also takes the standard Abrahamic attitude that earthly wealth is an illusion in comparison to the pleasures of the hereafter. The book proclaims, “You who believe, many rabbis and monks wrongfully consume people’s possessions and turn people away from God’s path. [Prophet], tell those who hoard gold and silver instead of giving in God’s cause that they will have a grievous punishment” (9:34). The Qur’an frequently uses language related to financial transactions in order to describe the arrangement that faithful believers have with God, as when it states, “Who will make God a good loan? He will double it for him and reward him generously” (57:11). The sense here is obviously that one should focus on one’s divine rewards, rather than one’s earthly acquisitions.

Though general trade and lending are treated favorably in the Qur’an, usury is strongly condemned. The book can be fairly mild on the subject, as when it states, “Whatever you lend out in usury to gain value through other people’s wealth will not increase in God’s eyes, but whatever you give in charity, in your desire for God’s approval, will earn multiple rewards” (30:39). Much more firmly, a different surah announces that “[T]hose who take usury will rise up on the Day of Resurrection like someone tormented by Satan’s touch. . .God has allowed trade and forbidden usury” (2:275-6). Just as clearly, another surah warns, “do not consume usurious interest, doubled and redoubled. . .beware of the Fire prepared for those who ignore [Him]” (3:130-1). The Qur’an advises readers to release debtors from usurious agreements (2:278), and notes that Jewish believers practice usury even though their scriptures forbid it (4:161). Now, what the Qur’an actually says about interest, or riba is pretty small in scope – in fact, you just heard almost all of it. Nonetheless, riba is a particularly giant subject in Islamic jurisprudence, with hadiths reporting that Muhammad actually spoke about interest as having a lot of different varieties, and so as you can imagine, from the codification of the hadiths in the ninth century onward, Shariah and Fiqh have explored the legality of usury for a long time in Islamic history.

While Qur’anic verses on the subject of usury, as important as the topic eventually proved, are fairly minimal, the book has more to say on the general topic of bonding agreements – covenants or oaths. These were some of the main ties that knit the intertribal world of Arabian society together, and they come up numerous times in the Qur’an. As the book says, “Fulfil any pledge you make in God’s name and do not break oaths after you have sworn them. . .Do not use your oaths to deceive each other” (16:91, 94). Oaths to the Prophet Muhammad in the Qur’an are especially sacred, as another surah emphasizes, “Those who pledge loyalty to you [Prophet] are actually pledging loyalty to God Himself – God’s hand is placed on theirs” (48:10). Oaths are given more extensive explanation in a long verse in an early surah, which differentiates thoughtless and momentary oaths from binding oaths, telling believers that if they break a binding oath, they are obligated to atone by feeding ten poor people, or clothing them, or freeing a slave, or, if one lacks the resources to do this, fasting for three days (5:89).

While commercial transactions and the oaths and documents that bind them are important parts of the Qur’an’s legalistic materials, the verses on these subjects are relatively minimal in number and short in length. There is another arena of public life on which the Qur’an issues rulings, and this is criminal justice. As with other legalistic components of the Qur’an, the book’s dictates on crimes and punishments are brief and scattered throughout the book. Let’s move on, then, to what the book has to say about crime and prosecution for crime in the earliest Islamic society. [music]

The Qur’an on Crime and Punishment

We’ve already heard one Qur’anic ruling on crime and punishment. Surat al-Nur, the 24th surah, directs adulterers and adulteresses to be whipped publicly 100 times, though the process for convicting adulterers is a complex one that requires the testimonies of numerous witnesses. There are a small handful of what are called hadd crimes, or hudud crimes, in the Qur’an, hudud meaning “boundaries” or “limits,” and hudud crimes meaning crimes which transgress over the boundaries allowed by the Qur’an. The first of these crimes is adultery, which, once again, after a prosecution is carried through, requires a severe corporal punishment. The second of these crimes is slander, about which we already heard a verse – as Surat al-Nur states “As for those who accuse chaste women of fornication, and then fail to provide four witnesses, strike them eighty times, and reject their testimony ever afterwards” (24:4), with the punishment for bearing false witness to adultery nearly as severe as the punishment for adultery itself.

Perhaps the most notorious of the Qur’an’s hudud rulings is the one for theft. Surat al-Ma’idah, the fifth surah, proclaims, “Cut off the hands of thieves, whether they are man or woman, as punishment for what they have done – a deterrent from God” (5:38). And while this sentence is severe, an even more severer ruling comes right before it in the same surah, likely the harshest injunction in the entire Qur’an: “Those who wage war against God and His Messenger and strive to spread corruption in the land should be punished by death, crucifixion, the amputation of an alternate hand and foot, or banishment from the land: a disgrace for them in this world, and then a terrible punishment in the Hereafter, unless they repent before you overpower them” (5:33-4). These are ferocious sentences, the latter problematically vague, and apiece with some of the more brutal dictates in the Bible. They may simply be carryovers from pre-Islamic Arabian custom, rather than anything original to Islam.³¹ Nonetheless, the injunctions to torture, mutilate and kill in the event of significant crimes have been influential in the history of Shariah and Fiqh, with hadiths and jurists working out the consequential parameters of how convictions, sentencings, and clemency for the Qur’an’s hudud rulings might be carried out in practice.

There is a principle in Qur’anic criminal justice known as qisas, often translated as “retaliation in kind.” The Torah’s “eye for an eye” punishment system is present in the Qur’an, albeit in a modified form. Here’s a very important pair of verses on the subject from Surat al-Baqarah:

You who believe, fair retribution [again qisas] is prescribed for you in cases of murder: the free man for the free man, the slave for the slave, the female for the female. But if the culprit is pardoned by his aggrieved brother, this shall be adhered to fairly, and the culprit shall pay what is due in a good way. This is an alleviation from your Lord and an act of mercy. If anyone then exceeds these limits, grievous suffering awaits him. Fair retribution saves life for you, people of understanding, so that you may guard yourselves against what is wrong. (2:178-9)

These verses need to be understood in their historical context. First of all, what they basically say is that a free man who has murdered a free man can be executed for the sake of retribution, and the same for a woman or slave, unless a bereaved family member pardons the murderer, in which case the murderer can make financial remuneration to the bereaved’s family. The regulation thus leaves some room for leniency at the discretion of the parties involved – an appreciable step forward from the ancient “eye for an eye” system of crimes and punishments. What’s also important to remember about the Qur’anic ruling on retaliation is nicely described by scholar M.A.S. Abdel Haleem: “Before Islam, the Arabs did not observe equality in retribution, but a stronger tribe would demand more, e.g. . . .a free man for a slave, or several men for one man, likewise for financial compensation. The intention of this verse is to insist on equality.”³² Put differently, in the world of pre-Islamic Arabia, conflicts like the al-Basus War, a 40-year feud over a camel, and the War of Dahis and al-Ghabra, a 40-year feud over a horse race, persisted due to long strings of retaliatory violence. The Qur’an’s rulings on fair retribution, though they are blunt, when they were broadcast in the 610s and 620s, still constituted an effort to forestall the seesawing violence that perpetuated tribal wars in Arabia prior to Islam.

The hudud crimes and qisas rulings in the Qur’an, then, were in their inception, likely continuations of, and modest improvements on pre-Islamic Arabian custom. As much as they can be understood today as part of the social evolution of Late Antique Arabia, it’s worth pausing for a moment to remember that the Qur’anic laws on criminal justice that we’ve just heard still shape Shariah in Islamic countries today. Contemporary Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Yemen, and other nations, each with its adherence to a specific school of Islamic law, all implement forms of the Qur’an’s draconian punishments, though both Shariah and Fiqh guide their law courts through conviction processes. However, this episode is, once again, on the legalistic sections of the Qur’an, rather than the huge subject of Islamic law and its implementation in human societies over the past 1,400 years, so let’s stick with what’s actually printed in the Qur’an.

Qur’anic Laws on Homosexuality and the Veil

There are two final topics having to do with criminal law and the Qur’an that we should spend a moment considering, more because they have been flashpoints of modern discussion than because they’re particularly salient topics in the Qur’an. The first is homosexuality. The second is the hijab, or veil. Let’s take a look at the surprisingly minimal and sparse verses in the Qur’an regarding these subjects, starting with homosexuality.

The Qur’anic verses having to do with homosexuality are opaque and interpretively contested. Two verses in Surat an-Nisa, the fourth surah, for instance, condemn “lewd acts” and recommend unspecified punishments for them (4:15-16), but these acts may be adultery or some different form of sexual indecency, rather than same-sex intercourse.³³ The Qur’an also engages with the Biblical story of Lot at two different junctures. Let’s get the story of Lot from Genesis in our minds. Here it is. In the Biblical story of Lot, in Chapter 19 of Genesis, some angels go to visit the patriarch Abraham’s nephew Lot in the city of Sodom. The citizens of Sodom want to have sex with the angels, and the angels, on the verge of being gang raped, for want of a more polite term, blind the citizens of Sodom in order to defend themselves. God, afterward, destroys the city of Sodom. That’s the Biblical story, and the Qur’an seems mostly familiar with it.³⁴ In the Qur’an’s retelling of the Biblical Sodom story, Lot asks the would-be rapists, “Must you, unlike [other] people, lust after males and abandon the wives that God has created for you? You are exceeding all bounds” (26:165-6). In a different surah of the Qur’an which also reviews the events of Genesis, Chapter 19, Lot says something similar to the would-be rapists of Sodom, exclaiming, “How can you practice this outrage? No other people has done so before. You lust after men rather than women! You transgress all bounds!” (7:80-1). Lot’s incredulous condemnation is echoed similarly in another Surah, still (27:54-5), and then yet again, with the Biblical figure asking the Sodomites, “How can you lust after men, waylay travelers, and commit evil in your gatherings?” (29:29). And that’s it. Later Islamic law, following the wheel ruts of the earlier Abrahamic religions, has condemned homosexuality as a sin. The Qur’anic verses on homosexuality certainly aren’t positive about it, but they also largely deal with a Bible story in which it’s not homosexuality, but homosexual rape that is the transgression at hand, a very unfortunate association, as it was in Genesis’ Sodom story to begin with more than a thousand years prior.

Let’s now turn to the subject of what the Qur’an says about the veil. This is another important, contentious subject, so let’s start by simply reading what the Qur’an states about the hijab, the niqab, the burqa, and other religiously mandated head coverings in the Islamic world. Surat an-Nurannounces, “[T]ell believing women that they should lower their eyes, guard their private parts, and not display their charms beyond. . .what [ordinarily] shows. . .they should draw their coverings over their necklines [the word is juyub, or breasts or bosom] and not reveal their charms except to [male family members]. . .they should not stamp their feet as to draw attention to any hidden charms” (24:31). A later surah states, “Prophet, tell your wives, your daughters, and women believers to make their outer garments [or cloaks] hang low over them so as to be recognized and not insulted” (33:59).³⁵ The word hijab is used just once to describe a physical thing in the Qur’an, in a surah that warns believers, “When you ask [Muhammad’s] wives for something, do so from behind a screen [or hijab, or curtain]: this is purer both for your hearts and for theirs” (33:53). So, those are the Qur’anic verses having to do with the hijab. As scholar Reza Aslan writes, “Although long seen as the most distinctive emblem of Islam, the veil is, surprisingly, not enjoined upon Muslim women anywhere in the Quran. The tradition of veiling and seclusion (known together as hijab) was introduced into Arabia long before Muhammad, primarily through Arab contracts with Syria and Iran, where the hijab was a sign of social status.”³⁶ While different Islamic countries today have various dictates on head coverings, what the Qur’an recommends most directly is covering cleavage and wearing a jilbab, or cloak-like outer garment, in order to be modest and to make Muslim women visually distinct from others. The Prophet’s wives, being the mothers of the believers, have a singular status according to the Qur’an and thus, according to the Qur’an, must only be seen from behind a screen.

The verses related to the veil, then, while they don’t explicitly say Muslim women must wear a hijab, or a niqab, or a chador, or a shayla that covers just this much of their head and hair, do advocate for women to dress modestly. No one knows exactly what the Prophet’s expectations of women were in the exilic community of Medina in the 620s, and anyone who opines confidently on the subject is leaning on legal scholarship, hadiths, and exegesis rather than the precise words of the Qur’an itself, which are fairly open ended.

So that takes us through Qur’anic ordinances on major crimes, and the less conclusive Qur’anic verses related to homosexuality and the veil. As we complete our tour of the legalistic materials in the Qur’an, there’s just one more subject to cover, and that’s what the Qur’an has to say about fighting and war. As we learned in our long sequence on Muhammad, the Prophet’s revelations emerged into a world of conflict – conflict between the new religion of Islam, and the older pagan hegemony of Mecca. The two groups clashed at the Battle of Badr, the Battle of Uhud, the Battle of the Trench, and the Battle of Hunayn, and thus, war was an unfortunate reality to the first generation of Muslim believers. Forged in the fires of these battles and the tensions between conservative Meccans and the revolutionary ideas of Islam, the Qur’an’s verses about fighting and war are varied, some urging pacifism, some urging warfare, and everything in between. Let’s take a look at the Qur’anic injunctions on fighting and war, two things that, whether he wanted it or not, were nonetheless parts of Muhammad’s life and times. [music]

Qur’anic Regulations on Fighting and War

Does the Qu’ran promote war, or peace? What is jihad, and what does the Qur’an actually say about it? Let’s try to answer these important questions. Scholar Rumee Ahmed, in a recent essay exploring just these questions, writes “[T]he Qur’an contains numerous verses that can easily be read to promote either war or peace, depending on the specific verses being read and the disposition of the reader. . .between the black-and-white readings put forward by Islamophobes and apologists are many shades of gray, and Muslim scholars have historically argued for more nuanced readings of Qur’anic verses that might be termed ‘aggressive’ or ‘defensive’ but that are not wholly either.”³⁷ That explanation elucidates the Qur’anic attitude toward war and peace in a nutshell – the text has numerous verses recommending both, these verses are complex, and Islamic theologians have debated the meanings of Arabic words like fitna and din, and their usage in the Qur’an, since the early medieval period. All told, the Qur’an is an Abrahamic scripture, and contains the usual Abrahamic binary attitude toward war. The Tanakh mandates both charity to widows and orphans, and the genocide of ethnic and theological out groups. The New Testament has the Gospels’ “turn the other cheek,” and Revelation’s horses soaked with the blood of unbelievers up to their bridals. Similarly, the Qur’an has injunctions toward war, and injunctions toward peace. Let’s look at a few.

Surat al-Baqarah, again the Qur’an’s second and lengthiest surah, has what might be the Qur’an’s most characteristic verses on when to fight, and when to stop fighting. This is the Tarif Khalidi translation of the surah:

Fight in the cause of God those who fight you, but do not commit aggression: God loves not the aggressors. Slay them wherever you fall upon them, and expel them from where they had expelled you; apostasy by force is indeed more serious than slaying. Do not fight them near the Holy Mosque unless they fight you therein. If they fight you therein, slay them: such is the reward of unbelievers. But if they desist, then God is All-Forgiving, Compassionate to each. Fight them until there is no longer forced apostasy, and the religion is God’s. If they desist, no aggression is permitted except against the wicked. A Holy Month will substitute for a Holy Month, and sacrilege calls for retaliation. Whoever commits aggression against you, retaliate against him in the same measure as he committed against you. Fear God and know that God stands by the pious. (2:190-4)³⁸

The alternating regulations there typify what many Qur’anic rules on violence sound like. Fight and kill those who are fighting and trying to kill you. If they stop, you need to stop. As another example, the Qur’an says, “Prepare against them whatever forces you [believers] can muster, including warhorses, to frighten off [these] enemies of God and of yours, and warn others unknown to you but known to God. Whatever you give in God’s cause will be repaid to you in full, and you will not be wronged. But if they incline towards peace, you [Prophet] must also incline towards it, and put your trust in God” (8:60-1). That’s another archetypal example of the Qur’an’s attitude toward warmaking – again, fight when assaulted, and make peace when foes are ready to make peace, and other junctures besides these offer similar directives. (8:39).

Generally, the Qur’an condones violence only when it is enacted in order to end the persecution of Muslims. The book states, “[Believers], fight them until there is no more persecution, and all worship is devoted to God alone: if they desist, then God sees all that they do” (8:39). The latter part of the verse implies that if factional violence ends, and unbelievers go back to unbelief, then they will still have God to reckon with. A more militant verse can be found in Surat al-Tawbah, the ninth surah, which says this: “Fight those People of the Book who do not [truly] believe in God and the Last Day, who do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden, who do not obey the rule of justice, until they pay the tax promptly and agree to submit” (9:29). There is no sense here that the Jews and Christians in question (the People of the Book, in other words) are actively persecuting or fighting Muslims, and the commandment, which occurs in the midst of a paragraph about the delusions of Jews and Christians, simply seems to exhort believers to force Jews and Christians to submit and pay a special tax, an act of preemptive oppression on the side of the believers, rather than fighting in self-defense, which is generally what’s condoned elsewhere in the Qur’an. What is often called the “Sword Verse” in Surat al-Tawbah of the Qur’an is likely the most militant of all, ordering readers, “wherever you encounter the idolaters, kill them, seize them, besiege them, wait for them at every lookout post; but if they repent, maintain the prayer, and pay the prescribed alms, let them go on their way, for God is most forgiving and merciful. If any one of the idolaters should seek your protection [Prophet], grant it to him so that he may hear the word of God, then take him for a place safe for him” (9:5-6). These are, even though they offer leeway to Meccan polytheists who repent, and even though they were likely the product of an exilic Medinan community fighting for survival against the Meccan oligarchy, dangerous verses to be floating around in religiously diverse societies. In context, in Surat al-Tawbah of the Qur’an, the so-called “Sword Verse” is specifically directed toward pagan Meccans who violated terms of a peace treaty agreed on in the year 628.³⁹ It tells Muhammad’s followers that pagans who broke the treaty of Hudaybiyyah are fair game for execution, unless they repent, in which case they should be left alone.

In summation, then, the Qur’an’s verses on fighting and war sound similar to many of those in the Bible, vacillating from forbearing and tender on one side to wrathful and belligerent on the other, and just as with the Bible, there is a complex history behind Qur’anic verses having to do with violence. The Abrahamic religions were each born into worlds that were intermittently quite hostile to them, and so naturally their scriptures responded in kind. Over the generations, Islamaphobes have tweezed verses from the Qur’an to try and prove Islam as doctrinally a theology of violent conquest, just as Muslim extremists have interpreted these same verses as sanctioning indiscriminate factional violence. All three Abrahamic scriptures promote war as well as peace, and Jews, Christians, and Muslims have responded to these verses variously according to the vicissitudes of each religion’s long history.

One often-discussed part of the Qur’an’s verses on war is the word jihad. The word is sometimes translated as “holy war,” but its literal meaning is “struggle.” Sometimes, indeed, the Qur’an uses the word jihad in the context of a violent struggle with oppressors or unbelievers. However, in the context of the Qur’an, jihad, or “struggle,” is used in a number of different contexts, including struggling with one’s self, and struggling to suppress one’s errant impulses. As on surah advises, “Have faith in God and His Messenger and struggle for His cause with your possessions and your persons – that is better for you, if only you knew – and He will forgive your sins” (61:11-12). Those verses see jihad not as struggling against enemies, but instead struggling with one’s own moral failings. While jihad is certainly used in the Qur’an in order to describe warfare against ideological adversaries, the book also understands the term to mean striving to be a more righteous person, and in some Islamic traditions, the latter meaning – the jihad with one’s own recalcitrant soul – has been a more prevalent meaning one than any other.⁴⁰

To close this section on war and peace and jihad and other lighthearted topics, I want to read a final verse related to fighting. It is from a Medinan surah – a revelation from the period when Muhammad was not only continuing to receive prophetic messages, but also mired in the humdrum grind of managing a world of parents and kids, date palms, camels, commerce, walks to the well, and we can imagine, treks out into nature to get away from his manifold obligations. While in this challenging dual role of both prophet and exilic leader, Muhammad had the following revelation, in the HarperOne translation: “Fighting has been prescribed for you, though it is hateful to you. But it may be that you hate a thing though it be good for you, and it may be that you love a thing though it be evil for you. God knows, and you do not” (2:216).⁴¹ It’s a good verse to remember after all of these others on war and peace, a significant piece of evidence that Muhammad never wanted to go to war with those who made war on him, and it suggests that although the Prophet sometimes doubted his own ability to make the right choices, he at least resolved to keep trying. [music]

The ahl al-kitab (People of the Book) in the Qur’an

So that was a tour of the legalistic portions of the Qur’an. The couple of hundred verses that we looked at in this program were sometimes rather progressive in their historical context, like the ones on women’s inheritance rights. Sometimes, they likely passed on ancient Arabian customs with little modification, as with the Qur’an’s generally patriarchal assumptions about the social order, and the book’s regulations on keeping oaths and ratifying loan agreements. Sometimes, forged in the fires of theological conflicts as they were, the Qur’an’s legalistic verses reflect the plight of a minority population trying to survive a violent epoch of Late Antique Arabian history. All told, the Qur’an’s laws are about what you would expect from a text with Abrahamic ideological roots that emerged between about 610 and 632 CE.

To go full circle back to the beginning of this program, we should remember that the ordinances of the Qur’an constitute only a very small portion of what’s in the book. There are actually hundreds of other pronouncements in the Qur’an having to do with personal conduct, but they don’t quite take a legalistic form. The book has numerous assurances that, for example, celestial rewards or infernal punishments will follow correct conduct related to giving to charity, or showing mercy and patience, or most often, believing in God and doing good deeds. These are not, however, legalistic statements having to do with law in human society, but instead directives on how to be a good person, avoid Jahannam, or hell, and achieve Jannah, or heaven. The Qur’an, as I emphasized in the previous episode, is ultimately an inspirational book, and not a draconian list of commandments, as the past two hours of this show perhaps made it sound.

Before we go today, I want to talk about one final Qur’anic concept. This final concept has to do with Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and what the very first generation of Muslims thought of these three religions together as a unit. When I first read the Qur’an, I particularly remembered the commonly deployed Arabic phrase ahl al-kitab, often translated as “people of the book.” The phrase in the Qur’an describes Jews, Christians, and Muslims together in a single bloc, distinguishing them as scriptural monotheists from the pagan Arabs of Mecca, or mushrikun, who were Muhammad’s avowed theological opponents. I’m not sure why that term stuck with me – probably because I was an English major, and ahl al-kitab, again, “people of the book,” sounded cool. For profounder reasons than my whimsies, though, ahl al-kitab is a very important term, both in the Qur’an, as well as in later Islamic history.

The Qur’an, and we can suppose, Muhammad, had complex and evolving attitudes toward Judaism and Christianity. Early Islamic history describes a class of people called haneefs. The haneefs, as we’ve learned, were monotheists who believed in Abrahamic traditions, but were not Jews or Christians. They were in some ways pre-Islamic Muslims, inclined in all ways to the scriptural ancestry of Islam, but not yet having the benefit of the prophetic ministry of Muhammad. The haneefs of pre-Islamic Arabia, in later Islamic thought, were the adherents of an original, primordial religion that had continued unbroken since Abraham had come to Mecca and built the original Kaaba. And alongside these haneefs, in places like Yathrib and Khaybar and the Himyarite kingdom, Jews, especially after the first century, settled in the Arabian Peninsula, just as Christians, over the same time period, settled in Najran, Mecca, and elsewhere. Muhammad was born exactly five hundred years after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and over those five hundred years, Syriac, Aramaic, and Arabic speaking Christian and Jewish populations had thoroughly become a part of the loam of the region.

From 622-632, the first Muslims lived alongside Jews and Christians in the city of Medina. Recent scholarship on the Qur’an, considering its laws and language, has begun to consider just how closely they lived. The Qur’an uses the term mu’minun, or believers, hundreds of times, often as a communal term for pious monotheists, whereas it uses the word Muslimun, or “Muslims,” just a few dozen. Historian Fred Donner, in a 2010 study, argued that the Qur’an emerged into a theologically porous population of monotheists, mu’minun, or believers, who had shared scriptural heritage and moral sensibilities, and a collective sense of a coming judgment day.⁴² In Donner’s hypothesis, the Jewish and Christian believers within this hybrid Medinan religious collective likely respected Muhammad’s teachings as consonant with their own religions’ teachings, and found that as scriptural monotheists, they had far more in common with one another than they did the old guard mushrikun down in Mecca, who were still doing nasty pagan things like practicing female infanticide, and worshipping large pantheons of sometimes dubious gods.

This is a fascinating and sensible theory, rooted as it is in Qur’anic language, not the least of which is the term ahl al-kitab – once again “people of the book.” In our dozens of hours of episodes on Late Antiquity in this podcast, we learned that contrary to traditional Christian-dominated historiography, pagan and Christian groups intermingled amicably, or at least indifferently, for centuries prior to the Christianity partnering with the Roman imperial regime in the fourth century. The salvific faiths of Isis and Cybele had broad commonalities with the basic architecture of Christian ideology, and in the early Roman imperial period, often religion was no more of an identity marker than ethnicity, language, and income level, and so Christians naturally percolated together with everybody else. It follows, then, that in the Medina, between 622 and 632, the Prophet Muhammad may have overseen a hybrid religious community where Meccan Muslims, Medinan Muslims, various Christians, and various Jews all understood themselves as a community of mu’minun, or believers. The Constitution of Medina, which we looked at a couple of episodes ago, seems to be a binding agreement between various monotheist mu’minun guaranteeing peace within the city’s varied monotheist groups.

There are, however, some obvious wrinkles in the theory that Jews, Christians, and Muslims formed a happy and consanguineous ahl al-kitab between 622 and 632 in Medina. For one, according to the ninth-century biographies of Muhammad, the Prophet forced three different tribal groups of Jews out of Medina, allegedly sanctioning the beheading of hundreds of men and boys from the Jewish Qurayza tribe in 627. This was, again according to tradition, a mass-execution following the Battle of the Trench, during which the Qurayza tribe had double crossed Muhammad, and so it wasn’t a random persecution. But nonetheless, on either side of the tragic incident, humans don’t normally betray or behead one another when we feel a strong sense of kinship toward each other. Further, the Qur’an definitely distinguishes itself doctrinally from Judaism and Christianity, emphasizing that Jews have lost their moral compass in various ways, that Christians have got it wrong that God had a son, and that Islam is the final instance of God’s periodic reminders to follow the ancient and sacred religion that was revealed to Abraham long ago.

In summation, then, the term ahl al-kitab, or “people of the book,” changes throughout the many surahs of the Qur’an. These changes make sense. During the incredibly eventful years of the Qur’an’s revelations, the first Muslims found themselves having an evolving series of commonalities and differences with varying Jewish and Chrisitan groups. The term may have been aspirational in its inclusiveness, part rhetorical tool and part genuinely hopeful neologism that imagined permeable body of believers gradually assimilating to the messages of a new prophet, but that underestimated the firmness and convictions of Medina’s Christian and Jewish populations. Thus, in a Meccan surah from early in the Prophet’s career, the Qur’an says, “[Believers], argue only in the best way with the People of the Book. . .Say, ‘We believe in what was revealed to us and in what was revealed to you; our God and your God is one [and the same]” (29:46). Here, the Qur’an tells the people of the book to be courteous with one another and to share solidarity in their monotheism. A later Medinan surah we heard a moment ago, however, demands, “Fight those People of the Book who do not [truly] believe in God and the Last Day, who do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden, who do not obey the rule of justice, until they pay the tax promptly and agree to submit” (9:29). Maybe, as the Medinan community fended for itself and found the other ahl al-kitab to be less than reliable as confederates, Muhammad’s revelations about the people of the book slowly darkened in tone.

The verse that we just heard, and the final one of the many that we’ve heard in this long program, is at first glance dispiriting. The verse tells Muslims to force Jews and Christians to submit to a special tax, the jizyah, showing the Qur’an’s ultimate conclusion that some people of the book are more equal than others. The jizyah, eventually, was a major Islamic institution, wielded by caliphs and sultans to extract revenue from non-Muslims. And yet as with so many other subjects related to the Qur’an, it’s important to understand the jizyah in context. Students of Islamic history are familiar with the term jizyah, along with an associated term, the dhimmi, or protected people. In the early caliphates, the dhimmi, again, protected people, were Jews and Christians. These people of the book, as protected people, were given security under Shariah to continue practicing their own religions, and to govern with their own laws, provided that they remained loyal to the state. Jews and Christians, who did not pay zakah, or Islamic alms, made up for it by contributing to the state with their jizyah tax, as the Qur’an demanded.

Dhimmis, the Jewish and Christian believers, and later Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains given official protection under Shariah in various Islamic societies over the centuries – dhimmis were sometimes ruled over by fair-minded Muslim kings who treated them well, and sometimes by greedy and prejudiced Muslim kings who treated them poorly. The jizyah tax imposed on dhimmis generally had exemptions written into it, such that non-Muslims unable to pay were not penalized, and the tax was more often than not a modest one. And so as we look at that Qur’anic verse which tells readers to fight Jews and Christians, and force them to submit to a tax, we do see an unfortunate verse, prejudiced against Jews and Christians, that opened the way to their fiscal abuse in later Islamic history. However, as scholar Michael Pregill reminds us, “Jews and Christians living under Islamic rule during the height of Muslim domination over the Middle East and neighboring regions actually enjoyed something resembling officially recognized status as protected persons whose rights could not or should not be traduced. This is far better treatment than Jews and Muslims living under Christian rule in Europe received, when their physical presence was permitted at all.”⁴³ In other words, doctrinally opposed religious groups, over the course of the Middle Ages and afterward, did far harsher things in the name of religion than imposing small taxes on one another.

To return to our main subject, and bring the present show to a close, Islamic law is a breathtakingly complex topic, and it should be understood as such. Born in hundreds of Qur’anic verses, developed in hundreds of thousands of hadiths, and matured in likely millions of pages of Islamic legal scholarship, Shariah and Fiqh are oceanic disciplines, and the work of many generations. The task of distilling practicable laws from sacred scriptures is at the heart of all three Abrahamic religions. Changing divine revelation into human legislation, as Abrahamic religious history shows, is a long and imperfect process. Religious revelations are the stuff of evanescent moments. Their language is beautiful, ecstatic and persuasive, but it’s not often legally codified. Poetry is a galvanizing, intoxicating, viral thing, perfect in the strange ways that it moves us and stays in our heads, and law is dry, dutiful, and detailed, and trying to get the latter from the former is like trying to change wine back to water, a process as unglamorous as it is invaluable. [music]

Moving on to the Theological Origins of the Qur’an

Alright, gang, that takes us through the second of our three episodes on the noble Qur’an. We covered a lot of ground in this show, from Shariah and Fiqh, to Qur’anic laws on pilgrimages, fasting, prayer, almsgiving, marriage, divorce, inheritances, commerce, usury, oaths, crimes and punishments, fighting and war, and our closing look at the concept of the ahl al-kitab, or “people of the book,” and the eventual emergence of the jizyah tax imposed on dhimmis, or protected members of other faiths. I realize it’s been a dense episode, but it had damned well better be. Just as bright Jewish kids have studied the Talmud in yeshivas and sharpened their wits on discussions of Torah law, bright Muslim kids have studied the Qur’an, Shariah, and Fiqh in madrasas and sharpened their wits on discussions of Islamic law, and in either case, we’re looking at thousand and a half year long traditions in which a great number of eminently qualified people have been involved.

In the next program, Episode 119: The Qur’an Part 3: Origins, we’re going to look at a different aspect of the surahs. While Part 1 offered us an introduction to the book, and Part 2, its legalistic materials, Part 3 will explore the theological background of the Qur’an – both its Abrahamic heritage, as well as its Arabian roots. The patriarch Abraham alone is mentioned 70 times in the Qur’an, and dozens of other figures from the Bible appear throughout the Qur’an’s 114 surahs. In the next show, we’re going to discuss how the Qur’an uses Abraham, Moses, Joseph, Job, John the Baptist, Jesus, Mary, and other figures to make its case for Islam, and learn how their stories must have come to the Prophet Muhammad in western Arabia. The Qur’an, however, has other theological roots than its Abrahamic ones. An Arabian text, the Qur’an emerged into a polytheistic seedbed in which a common truism was that God had three daughters, Allat, Manat, and al-ʿUzza, and while the surahs assume the existence of Christianity’s Satan and Abrahamic angels, the Qur’an also broadly references jinn, an ambivalent caste of beings as created at the same moment as humanity, and a colorful part of Islamic tradition throughout subsequent centuries.

So, again, listeners, next time, we will bring our core series on Muhammad and the Qur’an to a conclusion in Episode 119: The Qur’an Part 3: Origins, and learn about the theological ancestry of this very sacred book. Thanks and shukran jazilan for listening, and I’ll see you next time.

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