Reading Surah 19: A rock-splitting, sky-bursting adventure

 Let’s read part of the Quran!

TWO DISCLAIMERS:

1. I think it’s impossible to read a religious text without bias because they typically cover very personal things. In this case, I think it’s smarter to use bias to my advantage, and use what I believe as a stepping stool up to an interesting perspective on what many Muslims believe. 

2. The orthodox Islamic belief states that to get the full grasp of the Quran you must read it’s poetry in the original Arabic. I’m not doing that as I don’t know Arabic, so I’m reading a translation. Grain of salt, I guess?

I think it’s really cool and wise to read things like the Quran, even if I have been conditioned to not believe it. I have found that it’s a strange book; on one hand it references the Bible multiple times, and expects readers to have some knowledge of the Bible. On the other hand, it adds bits of canon or “lore” onto these commonly heard biblical stories that weren’t in the initial biblical canon.

The Quran was written roughly 500 years after the Bible finished it’s 3000+ year long compilation in the ancient near east, so it figures that common folks hearing Mohammed’s alleged prophecies would know of Biblical stories, but probably lack the biblical manuscripts on-hand to say like “Wait, Mohammed, brother, that thing you said about [Moses, Abraham, Jesus, etc.] really doesn’t seem correct based off of the way we’ve read [insert Biblical book] all this time.”

If people in this time and place really did believe that Mohammed was divinely inspired, the concepts he brought to the table about Allah, morality, etc. could be difficult to dispute given the proper conditions. 

The most interesting place in my Quran readings where I’ve found it specifically refutes a piece of Biblical doctrine is Surah 19. Surahs are the chapters or sections of the Quran, in which there are a number of verses inside each Surah. Surah 19 records the birth of Jesus in the Quran by Mary(the title of Surah 19 is called “Maryam”). It has a whole Venn diagram’s worth of things to compare and contrast from the biblical account of the birth of Jesus, but from a bird’s eye view, the differences are far more significant than the similarities. Instead of listing them all out, I’m just gonna point out some of the more interesting ones. You can read Surah 19 here.

• Surah 19 includes the miraculous birth of Yahya(we call John the Baptist) before Jesus’s birth. In this story, though, the birth of John doesn’t seem to have any relevance to the birth of Jesus other than the fact that Allah is so powerful he can create something out of nothing(see v. 9).

• Now that is one magic baby: shortly after his own birth, baby Jesus miraculously speaks to those around him, saying: “I am indeed a servant of Allah: He hath given me revelation and made me a prophet; “And He hath made me blessed wheresoever I be, and hath enjoined on me Prayer and Charity as long as I live; “(He) hath made me kind to my mother, and not overbearing or miserable; “So peace is on me the day I was born, the day that I die, and the day that I shall be raised up to life (again)”! (19: 30-33)

• He states his purpose, and prophesies his death and resurrection, though I’m fairly certain he doesn’t mean resurrection from his death on the cross but his resurrection with all the other good Muslims at the end of time. Most Muslims state that the resurrection of Jesus after his death on the cross is false.

• After the account of Jesus’s birth, vv. 39-87 talk about Muslim heroes of the faith; prophets such as Abraham and Moses and their sons, how they strived against their environments to serve Allah and would thus be rewarded with paradise. Some bad offspring of these prophets would not see paradise due to disobedience on things such as observing Muslim prayer. Throughout these verses there is meditation on what type of person goes to heaven and what type of person goes to hell.

Hellish punishment befits those that spread heresy and mistruths. It’s stated multiple times in Surah 19 that stating that Jesus is the son of Allah, or that Allah is a father to anyone is a gross heresy. Most notably towards the closing of the Surah in vv. 88-92:

88. They say: “(Allah) Most Gracious has begotten a son!”

89. Indeed ye have put forth a thing most monstrous!

90. As if the skies are ready to burst, the earth to split asunder, and the mountains to fall down in utter ruin,

91. That they should invoke a son for (Allah) Most Gracious.

92. For it is not consonant with the majesty of (Allah) Most Gracious that He should beget a son.

For those who don’t know, Islam is a hyper-monotheistic religion, where mono means one, and theistic means god. One god, that's it. Christianity would also call itself monotheistic, yet our one God takes three persons in the trinity, in a way that each person of the trinity is uniquely god. It’s like saying 1 + 1 + 1 = 1, it doesn’t fully make sense by human understanding, but we believe in this type of one God. If two of the persons in the trinity were to have a father-son relationship like the bible claims, it would likely have a serious impact on how we view our own individual relationships and intimacy with god. 

Long story short, the idea of "God the Father" and "God the Son" is crucial for us as Christians. But, if your religion’s monotheistic perspective states: “No, this trinity thing is a lie, god is one being. He has no trinity, no relationship with a son, he’s just a singular 1 = 1 type being in heaven with dominance over the whole earth”, if your religion states this as crucial doctrine, the notion of Allah having a son is a disastrous, paradigm-shattering heresy. It is completely against the notion of a holy god, a god separated from us in so many inconceivable ways, for him to have a divine son. That is why Surah 19 states that people who disseminate such heresies(such as myself) are going to hell.

Now, obviously I don’t agree with Surah 19 about this whole thing. Something that caught my eye when I was finishing this was a coincidence, though. There is a nugget of truth in vv. 88-92 that I very much agree with about the notion that God could have a son, and it’s that it is a completely absurd notion. God having a son is so backwards of an idea for us humans; it is so backwards that, were it were true, the skies would really be “ready to burst” and the earth would be “split asunder”. If it were to be true, the whole world would have to undergo such a raw and traumatic transformation of so many deeply held truths, and it would be, in the literal sense of the word, an apocalypse(apocalypse literally translates to “revelation”).

If it were to be true that God existed and had a son, then nothing would ever be the same, and the very world as we know it would end.

Now, I’m smart enough to know that when Mohammed(or whoever) wrote Surah 19:88-92, they were intending to simply use dramatic imagery to scare the notion of a son of God out of the reader’s head. It’s very likely just the author employing dramatic imagery to leave an effect on the reader and say "I know you kids like to have fun but take this idea and throw it in a ditch".

But, to me, as a Jesus follower, this feels like an accidental prophecy. For the son of God to come to earth to do what he did was (and is) so revolutionary for our very scope of what is possible. The revolutionary nature of Jesus’s life is reflected in everything around him; including nature. Throughout the gospel accounts, he does miracles to show his audience that he has the divine credibility to make claims about himself such as the heretofore ludicrous claim that “I am God’s son.”

It’s notable to point out that a lot of these miracles are environmental, such as when Jesus calms a storm(Mark 4:39), or has a great divine cloud suddenly come upon him on top of a mountain(Mark 9:7). Two more events, and the two that most impact me, are at the moment of his death by crucifixion, where, as he’s on the cross(during the daytime), the skies go dark and the earth shakes and rocks split in two(Matthew 27:45,52). That sounds a lot like Surah 19:90 to me.

From my experience, the Quran and those who adhere to it don’t set out to even entertain the notion that God would have a son, or be of any nature to have any familial connections to any being. A crucial tenet to Islam is that God is so utterly separated in holiness from us, and can’t relate to us in ways we relate to each other. It would be uninspired of me to simply say “we Christians have this familial connection with God that Islam doesn’t, and that’s why we’re better”, because these are faith based issues and that doesn’t really prove my beliefs are any stronger than theirs. 

It does force me to reflect, though, on the opportunities that are created by the belief of a God that can be called a father by Jesus. It does make me reflect that through that fatherhood by God of one son, the idea that the whole world might be able to become his children in such a beautiful and intimate way that I can see in the life I live now.