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Apostasy in Islam and the QuranMay 20, 2014 at 12:20am

I'm writing this post to keep a promise.

In my recent HuffPost article, The Phobia of Being Called Islamophobic, I linked to a verse in the

Quran, 8:12, that invites believers to behead and mutilate disbelievers, as God "casts terror" in their

hearts.

This prompted the inevitable "Out of context!" refrain from the never-ending pool of apologist

"interpreters" who insist:

(i) That we should pay more attention to their words than to Allah's;

(ii) That they can explain Allah's words better than he can himself; and

(iii) That without their explanations, Allah's words run the risk of being read exactly as he wrote/said

them, that is, "literally".

I received many responses from these increasingly bumbling mental gymnasts, trying everything

they could to make the verse sound peaceful.

The responses were entertaining (if unfortunate), and all you need to understand them is

this paraphrasing by Alishba: 

" I know the Quran says ‘green’. 

But w hat i t actually means is that you need to get a yellow paint tub e and put i t in a glacier at

the North Pole, and take a blue paint tu be and pu t it in a glacier at the South Pole. So when

the glaciers m elt in som e 50,000 years, you'l l se e that the color ‘green’ will appear,

insha’allah. 

THAT is what the Quran is saying about seeing the ‘green’. Not the ‘green’ that we

ACTUALLY see all the time."  

My column prompted several people to write responses, none of which really gained enough traction

to merit a counter-response. One of the authors, however, was doggedly persistent in his defense of

his scripture. He is a Muslim-American physician, a cardiology fellow practicing in the United States.

It intrigued me, so I thought I'd try something.

Myth or Medicine? 

There is a passage in the Quran saying man is created from a "fluid, ejected, emerging between the

backbone and the ribs."

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Now, this is clearly false, whether you're talking about the fluid in question, or man himself. (To say

nothing of woman, who has her own association with rib-driven creation in other equally asinine

Abrahamic scriptures).

To me, this passage - verses 86:5-7, in a chapter astonishingly titled "The Night Comer" - is the

quintessential litmus test for how far an apologist will go to defend his beliefs. In my experience, the

majority who come across (please excuse the pun) this passage either back off after a few attempts

to rationalize it, confess that they don't understand it, or admit that it is anatomically inaccurate.

So bringing it up (again, pun not intended) to "moderates" helps separate those who are genuinely

interested in following evidence to reach a conclusion from those who start with a fixed conclusion

and work backwards.

I wanted to assess which side of this fence of intellectual dignity my cardiologist friend fell on. So I

proposed that if he posted a defense of the passage, explaining why he believes it to be correct, I

would give him his rebuttal on the apostasy verses.

In all honesty, I didn't think it would happen. But to my friend's credit, the post came, and it wasglorious. (I'm not even going to point out the puns anymore).

Here it was: a grown adult, an educated cardiology fellow, a practicing US physician, addressing the

great, contentious 21st century controversy: "Where does sperm come from?"

A Good Muslim or a Good Doctor - You Can't Always be Both 

In his post (read it here), the doctor tried to go with the minority view among "scholars" that the

passage should be translated to "the loins and the ribs," implying that Allah had successfully

localized the testes (or prostate/seminal vesicles) to somewhere in the abdomen/pelvis area.

This, of course, is a feat of wonder no less impressive than localizing Chicago to somewhere in the

northern hemisphere.

He also posted an Urdu translation from a khalifa he follows - unaware that this revered leader's

Urdu also read, "between the back and the ribs." And he topped it off with a giant diagram of a

pregnant woman with a full-term fetus. (Note to the layman: Neither women nor fetuses produce

sperm or semen.)

He didn't explain why God didn't just simply say, "You were created from sperm produced in the

testes." To be fair, though, if God was as articulate as even the most minimally competent writers, it

would leave his explainers (who He seems to need way more than they need him) with nothing to

do.

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I did read it in Arabic? Okay, then the original classical Arabic. But what about the Syro-Aramaic

roots? Or I'm reading it too "literally".

That last one, especially. Please, do anything but read it "literally". An interpretation, alternate

translation, whatever - but please, please, do not read this book the way it's actually written. It's

scary that way.

Back to the Big Picture 

I'm sure there will be responses to this as well, but I'm going back to the big picture. When I say,

"Unicorns don't exist," it's not fruitful to then engage in a debate with unicornologists about the length

of a unicorn's horn. But this was my part of the deal, and frankly, I enjoyed it.

I must stress that ideological differences aside, I unquestionably align myself with religious

progressives like Maajid Nawaz, or those from peaceful sects like Ismailis or the Ahmadiyya when it

comes to practical goals and purpose. If these people and communities represent the future of

Islam, I'm game.

However, the denial, twisting, and turning with scripture is dangerous. The idea of scriptural

inerrancy is becoming an indefensible problem. It inadvertently gives cover to fundamentalist Islamic

purists. It makes moderates look wishy-washy and inconsistent, while giving fundamentalists more

credibility as true representatives of Islam, because their actions are more closely consistent with the

sacred word. If moderates and progressives want to regain that credibility, they need to be more

honest about their scripture, and be open not just to clumsily "re-interpreting" it, but re-writing it

altogether.

They try, but it doesn't work. They cite 2:256 [There is no compulsion in religion...] while the very

next verse, 2:257, says those who choose not to believe will be tortured forever in hell.

They cite 18:29, which says everyone's free to believe - except for the part where it says those who

"choose" not to believe will have their faces scalded in hell.

Whatever your views on the Quran and apostasy, there is a lot of violence in the book (as there is in

other Abrahamic books) that isn't okay in any  context.

As Ayaan Hirsi Ali has pointed out, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Boko Haram don't use Osama bin

Laden or Mullah Omar to recruit young men. They use the Quran and the Hadith of the Prophet

Muhammad. All they have to do it cite it verbatim. No "interpretation" needed.

Take from that what you can.