Al-Ma'idah

 The further I get into this project, the less interested I am in parsing the Islamic surface of the text, and the more interested I am in untangling the Sufi depths.  The former so far has come across as a generic, though not unenjoyable, religious text.  The latter, however, specifically the mysteries of HU, Rabb, and ب , always seize my fascination when they arise.

1: The parallel between the restrictions of Ihram and those of Lent are irresistible.  It is natural to find the links between all these Abrahamic religions, but one wonders if the link goes back even further to Zoroaster.

2-5: Even more parallels between the three "peoples of the book", with the addition of an injunction against resentment against people of hostile faiths one notable point of departure.

6: So-called "dry ablution" is another interesting feature, and I don't know of anything similar in other religions.

7: It never hurts to recall the overarching theme of Islam: submission.  

8: Already reemphasizing the point in v2 (and in An-Nisa) against resentment and the cloudy thinking of antagonism.

9-10: These verses seem to play against each other, and it takes a bit of theology to reconcile them.  On the one hand, those who practice their own religion faithfully are forgiven, whatever it may be.  In the same breath, those who disbelieve the specific signs of this book are bound for Hell.  As is usual in such cases, only Hulusi's Sufi perspective can make sense of it:  it is not the disbelief in this particular Rasul that destines them for hell; it is a denial of reality, and specifically the reality of indivisibility.

11: A very straightforward verse that Hulusi confounds with his explication.  He posits that the Name Wakil is being referenced in the penultimate phrase, but there neither seems to be justification for this vowel shift, nor explanation of such a Name in his extensive preface on names.

12-13: Several potential inroads into this section: who are the "we" that appointed the tribes of Israel? What is the "share of the realities" that they have forgotten (Sahih version assumes it is the share that related to The Prophet)? What effect does this hardening of hearts have?  Is a member of such a "hardened" group forever locked out by blood?

14: To believe that the intersectional disputes between Christians are preordained by Allah brings a similar series of difficult questions.  The Allah of the Quran seems scarcely less petty than that of the Bible.

15-16: There is an emphasis on نو in Hulusi's rendition that seems unjustified.  Light is light, and does not seem to need explication.  The hint is of some sufi metaphysical meaning, but what could be deeper than the literal in this case?

17: A deft blow to the ridiculous Christian notion of Christ's divinity.  

18: Will the Quran keep to this, though, and refrain from claiming privileged status, or fall prey to ego as the Jews and Christians before did?

19: It is certainly tempting to think that a Divine messenger is thus destined to appear at intervals.  We are certainly due for a new one.

20-26: A surprisingly straightforward section, almost exactly as it is described in the Pentateuch.  Who, I wonder, are the two from among them who are said to have spoken up, though.

27-31: The alternate version of this story is fascinating. The addition of the crow is especially flavorful. Surely Abel threatening Cain with hellfire is anachronistic, however.

32-34: This would be a keystone verse in any text--were it not for the loopholes that modern day Muslims take to be the law itself.

35-37: Evidently the idea of eternal damnation was thoroughly trenchant by this time.  One wonders whether it became so in Islam as a result of Greek (and ultimately Egyptian) influence, or from further East.  In Christianity, at least, the corruption seems to begin with Tertullian in the 3rd century, and be thoroughly entrenched by the time of Augustine in the 5th.

38-39: Allah is all-forgiving--unless his followers get to the offenders first as in 34.

40: An interesting parallel with the LunHeng of Wang Chong, which I am reading concurrently.  Don't bother questioning your fate.  Heaven is capricious and petty, and does what it will.

41: At least the fifth time this troubling phenomenon has been highlighted.  Who are those whose hearts Allah does not wish to purify?  What are the criteria?  When is it determined?  The same problems exist with similar verses in the Bible, but the latter text does not emphasize it nearly so often.  

42-43: One wonders why indeed Jews or Christians would come seeking Islamic justice.  

44: The logic does not follow here, and I feel like I am missing a subtlety of the Arabic equivalent for "so".  The second clause simply does not follow from the first.

45-47: It makes a bit more sense now.  The effect seems to be, "Look: Jews and Christians have these same directions, and then twisted them.  If you just go by what Allah has revealed, no matter which version, you'll be fine.  But if you are worried about man's version of the same . . . well good luck with that."

48-49: And therefore, "If you stick to what Allah has revealed, it will become clear that which is common in all three."

50: ". . . you got a better idea, wiseguy?"

51-56: No doubt it would be tempting to side with the temporarily upper-handed, especially if the beliefs are fundamentally the same.  Very clever of The Prophet to nip that in the bud here.

57-60: And it is tempting to mock rituals which we find unfamiliar or extreme.  I sure received my share of it growing up.  If one is committed to the course, though, this is the only response.

61-63: Which is to say, "The proof is in the pudding," or, "By their works you will know them."

64: I can't be certain from context, but the Jews in this verse seem to be saying that their wealth is proof of their blessing.  Oh, what a pernicious doctrine, and how widespread among Christians today.

65: The reward here is an interesting one: the Gardens of Bliss are by no means a literal paradise, but easily seen as a state of enlightenment.  Hulusi, naturally, takes advantage of this interpretation.

66: But there is danger here of readers falling into the same trap as in 64.  If one follows the given Word, whether Torah, Gospel, or Quran, blessings will come.  If, therefore, one is not so blessed, surely they are sinners.

67: This one is an enigma.  Why should the Prophet need protection from the people?  Of what should he be afraid?   

68-69: I sure do like this ecumenical sentiment,and I sure do see little of it in modern Islam.

70-71: This tracks very well with the stories in the Torah.

72-73: And a valid critique of Christianity.  It is astonishing the nonsense that modern Christians allw themselves to believe, and evidently it was no different in the 6th century.

74: A well-placed reminder that this is not malice, but ridicule.

75: A new critique of the doctrine of Christ's divinity: "Then why did he eat, dummies?"

76: Nothing to see here on the surface, but a hint from Hulusi at a deeper meaning of هُوَ

77: This book is beginning to sound like it's intended for other "people of the book" as much as it is for the people of Islam.

78: David is an interesting choice here.  Of all the Hebrew prophets, he would not have not been in my top ten choices for an example of condemnation.  I wonder what the Prophet is referring to here.

79-80: Lets of disagreement between the three translations here.  I prefer Hulusi's version, especially in that it makes the eternal punishment one of ego, rather than of hellfire.

81-84: This is manifestly no longer true.  Perhaps in the 7th century there were men among the Christians who matched this description: sincere, humble, and ascetic.  I cannot think of an example in the last century, however.

85-86: This afterlife, while vague, certainly is appealing.

87-88: Almost exactly the sentiment of Peter in Acts 10.

89: I like that the breaking of an oath is not a sin against the recipient of the oath, but against reality itself, and the penalty corresponds.

90-92: Well I'm guilty of all of these on a weekly if not daily basis.  I do not sense that it causes the animosity that is predicted here.  I can see the point, though.  Maybe if I did them with others instead of alone in my hovel the result would be as described.

93: In two of the translations, this is a perfectly natural  extension of the preceding exhortations.  For Hulusi, naturally, there is a deeper progression: from devotion to understanding to enlightenment to protection.

94-96: An interesting and seemingly disjunct prohibition.  Why is hunting specifically prohibited during Ihram and not other activities?

97: The connection between these sacred practices and a reminder of Allah's omniscience is not intuitive.

98-99: Unless it is to be revealed through the punishment for violations.

100-102: A reasonable enough edict.  Don't keep asking why; you may not like the answer, not because Allah doesn't care to be questioned, but because you may not like the answers and they aren't useful to you anyway.

103-104: No doubt a necessary injunction at the time, but mostly a historical footnote today.

105: This verse resonates on several levels.  You are not your results. Worry about your dang self, and it will turn out alright, and you will be given understanding to boot.

106-108: A very practical regulation, with parallels in the Torah and the Gospel.  The emphasis on material goods and wealth is what sets the Quran apart from the others.

109: Another lovely connection to 105.  We are not called to task for the results of our actions, but for the actions themselves--even the prophets.

110-120: The longest coherent narrative I have yet encountered in the Quran, and wonderful in proportion to its fluidity.  Not only is the idea of Christ being called to account on the Judgement Day a marvelous concept, but his answer as well.  The inclusion of the account of Christ bringing a bird to life from clay here also gives weight to so-called apocryphal accounts like the Gospel of Thomas.  

Perhaps most wonderful, though, is the eponymous "table", the مائِدَةً that is revealed to the believers.  With no mention of a literal feast, it can only be taken as the glorious feast of revelation that is available to those who sincerely search for it.  I hope to be among them.

이상화기념사업회: 상화, 대구를 넘어 세계로

 2년전 빠지던 이상화의 시를 요새 방치되어있지만 다시 보게 되었다.  이상화의 시를 물론 역사 맥락 업시 볼 수 없는 시다.  과동대지진, ㄱ당 사건,  등과 같은 것을 더 깊이 알게 되서 그 시절의 시도 더 잘 이해하는 것 같다.  더군아 이 책은 지리학 맥락도 제공해서 옆으로 놓았던 번역 활동에 영감이 생겼다.  특히 지리학 개념 없이 이해할 수 없는 "대구행진곡"을 20째 번역으로 손을 댔다:

The Daegu March

 

Biseul Mountain to the front, Palgong Mountain to the rear

The waters of Geumhho River flowing through the center

So many spent tears and long sighs piling up,

Night after night and day after day, thus do you cry?

 

At the site of Dalgu Hill, more than half collapsed,

Or Dosu Park, overgrown with forest shadows,

Even though throngs of people come and go

Like an old tree on the Bangcheon levee, how many are there?

 

Wide Daegu Province, no matter how good you are,

As we whose laughter and dreams have been stolen,

Our bodies without even threads,

Wandering to the front or the back, our hearts are heavy.

 

As beautiful as a star, it is surely here

Swollen with kind and cute liquor

On this one breathless night, sleep not

Drink till the moon sets and the sun rises.

 

David Sedaris: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

Before this book, I found it a little difficult to put a finger on the exact source of Sedaris' charm.  Unforgiving sarcasm is always appealing, as long as one is not the target, and there is a certain twist in his figurative language that always surprises and unnerves.  These alone could not explain his unrivaled success, however, or his appeal to me in particular.  Plenty of writers have a similar talent with words, after all, without catching the mind quite like Sedaris does.

What must be relegated to a je ne sais quois in his other collections, however, finds another voice in this one.  In addition to the usual poignant and vibrant retellings of simple episodes in his life, where he teases out meaning and humor from the tiniest of details, as usual, there are two additional items.  Firstly, included here are a few dramatic monologues, ostensibly for forensic performance, that take great pains to be as far from Sedaris' own character as possible.  The wide variety in ages, genders, and beliefs scarcely bothers to conceal the common thread: these are the worst possible people you could imagine existing.  Each of the monologues begins innocently enough, but ramps up quickly to such heights of misanthropy that caricature is not a strong enough word. Giving free rein to his imagination, and freed from the bounds of the personal essay, Sedaris reveals what he has been after all along--not just in the book, but in all the previous ones.

The characters in the monologues are comically horrid, but we are only allowed to realize the depths of their sociopathy because these are monologues, and we have access to their deepest, most sinister thoughts.  Furthermore, each of them is oblivious to their portrayal, and convinced that they are the hero of whatever episode they are recounting.  If we were encountering them on the street, or, say, in a story where they were only bit players, they might seem almost human.  In fact, with such third-person armor, each of them could easily have found a home in one of Sedaris' other stories.  

This is the world that Sedaris has created, one where everyone is horrible--but managing for the most part to conceal it from each other and from the reader.  The author's father, notably, receives the closest attention in the essay sections, and very nearly reaches the depravity of the monologue characters.  If he were given his own monologue, all doubt of his detestability would be removed.  

It is also noteworthy that the author himself comes across as less varnished in this volume.  Perhaps at this age, Sedaris has simply grown comfortable with his depravity, and is less interested in assuming a persona.  In a way, the book is itself a monologue of sociopathy, nestled within with are smaller monologues that highlight his point: we are all terrible, you and me included. 

Shakespeare: Poems

In linguistics, there is a useful tool called "minimal pairs".  To really understand what a letter, a sound, a word means, one must find two elements that differ by only that one variable.  To extricate the fundamental difference between T and D, for example, one needs a set of words like "cat" and "cad".  To understand the difference between "watch" and "see", one needs a sentence such as "I ___ the television" and observe how the different words change the meaning in that slot, or even better "____ your back in case someone is following you", where one word is possible, and the other not.

In the thriving industry of Shakespearean analysis, I feel that this tool is underused.  No few number of people devote their lives to parsing the sonnets, and trying to discern what his intention was in writing them.  Such inquiry can never bear any fruit;  it can result at most in speculation, in the absence of a minimal pair with which to compare those works.  The question, "What was Shakepeare's relation to the Earl of Southampton?", which is never far from the sonnets, cannot be answered by them definitively.  As in a court of law, intent is notoriously difficult to establish.

Shakespeare's other poems, however, are another matter.  We are not left to the texts themselves to understand them. We have minimal pairs.  We can look at the other accounts from which Shakespeare borrowed these stories, and see what he changed.  It is those points, the elements that are added to or deleted from the source material, that can unlock something that the texts in and of themselves can never answer.  In "The Rape of Lucrece", for example, the vast sections devoted to the thoughts of the rapist Tarquin stand out in contrast to any other account of the story--and especially to Ovid's account, likely Shakespeare's point of reference.  Nearly half of the poem seems dedicated to the inner conflict within this otherwise universally reviled figure.  Shakespeare gives Tarquin and Lucrece equal weight, turning a story of one noble woman into a dichotomy between a helpless beauty, and the savage whose irresistible passion destroyed them both. 

This overlay is especially fruitful in the case of "Venus and Adonis", insofar as Shakespeare's changes are even more drastic.  In the original account, Adonis and Aphrodite (Shakespeare's substitution of the Roman Venus is also revealing) were actual lovers for a long time before his death, and he even chose to stay with her for a third of the year.  Shakespeare flips this entirely on its head.  Not only does Adonis resist the lusty goddess at first, but he dies almost immediately after relenting.  The original myth of love and grief is transformed into a cautionary tale against the dangers of passion.  The roles are reversed, the man in this case a helpless beauty and the woman possessed by lust.  Even the names reveal the focus: savage Rome and beautiful Greece, lust and beauty--the parallel with Lucrece and Tarquin is clear.  

Which brings us to "The Phoenix and the Turtle".  Here we have not only minimal pairs, but a wealth of data.  Shakespeare is explicitly reacting to Robert Chester's "Love's Martyr", and the comparisons between the two would be sufficient for any linguist.  In addition, however, we have six other texts, among them the greatest writers of the time, each reacting to the same poem.  Not only can we infer from what aspects of the text Shakespeare focused on--or especially those he altered--but also from how his reaction differed from those of his peers.  Wouldn't it be lovely if someone would give me a patronage to read and parse them all.  Perhaps someday. 

One liberty taken by Shakespeare, however, is vivid even without the time to overlay the seven texts and scrutinize them in detail.  In Chester's poem, the eponymous birds voluntarily sacrifice themselves to create something even better from the ashes.  Shakespeare is having none of that.  "Leaving no posterity," the birds' death is unequivocal tragedy (59).  Nothing good comes from the meeting of power and beauty.  Not for Lucrece, not for Adonis, and not for the Turtle.  All are destroyed in the process, and  what remains is only to lament.

Alain de Botton: On Love

 I am skeptical by nature, and have grown especially skeptical, through experience, of anyone who seems to think quite a bit of themself.  If one thinks enough of themself to establish a global organization dedicated to spreading their own "wisdom" . . . well, I formed an opinion of this author well before reading any of his books.

And I was not altogether wrong in my assessment, it seems.  The omphaloskeptic pondering on the subject of love that filled this book was so laughable that one wonders if it was intended as a parody of philosophy.  The author, speaking ostensibly as the main character, agonizes over the topic, and especially over the specific question, "How could she suddenly just not love me?"  His obliviousness is tragicomic.  "How could she have ever loved you in the first place," I instead wondered.  "I have never met you and I can't stand you."  

I did find myself in the pages of this book, however--just not in the way that was likely intended.  I saw myself in the character of Chloe, who found herself in a relationship that was fine, but eventually grew tired of it, having never really reached the point of "love".  I saw myself in the main character as well, devoted supplicant whose worship goes cruelly unreturned. But mostly, I saw myself in the author: the overwrought analytic who can't see what is painfully obvious. 

Nathanael: The Art of Seeing and The Essentials of Magick

 Reading these two books is a manifestation of my growing interest in Something More.  My spiritual journey has been long and convoluted, beginning with my formative years in a bronze age Hebrew war god cult.  After walking through the one-way door out of my parents' religion, the first natural question was "Is there anything out there?  Gods, ghosts, aliens, whatever?  Or is this all there is?"  My answer to myself was "I'm not sure, but if there isn't, then whats the point of living?  So let's assume there is and try to find it."

So it began, a series of questions, years spent finding answers that were at best provisional, a flowchart of yesses and noes that eventually led to the current question: "How can I meaningfully interact with the something that is bigger than me?"  

I wouldn't say these books answered the question.  The sort of things that the author is trying to describe are pretty clearly unteachable through a book.  Nonetheless, I have taken a few things from him and added them to the spiritual casserole that is my belief system.  None of the things in this book are likely to be key ingredients, but seasoning is just as important as meat and veg.

John LeCarre: A Delicate Truth

There is an entire section of my bookshelf filled with orphaned books, volumes that somebody just dropped in my lap when they were moving or clearing out.  Loath to let anything remain unread, I accept them and pick at them when I have time.  Usually they are of the breezy beach read variety, and I was fully expecting this to match that description, well written and entertaining, but not particularly significant.  For 90% of the book, I was confirmed in my assessment.

As I drew near the end, however, I began to get nervous.  How on earth would the author extract his hero and the obligatory love interest from the mess into which he had written them?  There were only 30 pages left in which to do it.  Then 20.  Then the book was finished, the characters were explicitly not saved, and I found myself staring into the void, when I had not intended to.  If I had wanted to be reminded that we are fundamentally alone in a brutal world, there are plenty of other books on my shelf to serve that purpose.  Schopenhauer is always happy to oblige on that point.  

And yet there I was, ambushed by what I thought would just be a light diversion.  It is never far from my mind that "Si che non basta l'esser uomo dabbene e virtuoso," as per Cellini.  "It is not enough in this world to be a man of talent and virtue."  Before facing this truth, I usually raise my shields, but I ran into it completely defenseless here.  As LeCarre's characters found out, being good at your job and doing the right thing, more often than not, bring ruin and little else.

An-Nisa II

 95: A brief dip into the Arabic gives a little insight into the familiar words Jihad and Mujahideen here.  The root of each seems to be "strive" rather than "fight", 

96: And those who so strive, risking life and property, are rewarded with "ranks", which is a fascinating overlap with Dante's struggle over the hierarchy of virtue.

97-99: Another seemingly ignored verse.  "But we were oppressed!" is not among the accepted excuses.  Why live where you are oppressed?  Is the world not vast enough for you?

100-103: No doubt a necessary allowance at the time.  What about today, now that the believers have themselves become the oppressors, as it ever is with religion?

104: The cycle returns, like the line inscribed by a point on a rotating wheel, to a position of power.

105-106: This seemingly disconnected point may well simply be the signal of a shift in rhetoric.  Very often at this point, there is the sense that an answer is being offered to an unasked question, one that is so obvious as to not need included.

107-111: And this is the point into which we are being led, by only the most tenuous of connections to the previous topic.

112: An excellent point, one that I can't think of a parallel for in other religious texts.

113: Hulusi's (and by extension the Sufi) obsession with orthomancy, arises again here, though هُ remains ignored by the now 3 other versions I am referencing.  It seems to have some linguistic veracity, however.  The diving Name is indeed given as اللَّهُ in places, and elsewhere (as here) as اللَّهِ.  It remains to be seen whether this is a simple morphemic variation, or, as Hulusi seems convinced, the source of a deep metaphysical truth.

114: A little unclarity here.  "They" seems to mean the enemy of v. 104, who are then said to be deceitful (105), self-destructive (107), conspiratorial (108), slanderous (112), and heretical (113).  There is nothing in this string of verses to suggest a shift in pronoun referent that I can see.  And here we are in 114 promising them a reward for their acts of charity.  

115: And more confusion.  "We will abandon him" seems to directly contradict the "and lead him to hell" that follows it.

116: Hulusi takes a liberty that the other three translators do not.  The text is clearly a proscription against assigning partners to Allah, but Hulusi extrapolates that into duality in general.  It's a nice point, but not in the text.

117:This is a fascinating prospect.  Allah is the alpha male.  Satan is the correspondingly naughty female.  the first mention of the supposed topic of this book in some pages.

118-120: Even more fascinating! Who is this Iblis, and what is his connection with the Satan of the previous verse?  Most importantly, why does Hulusi insert him here when there is no mention in the original text, and these verses are clearly referring to the same being as 117.

121-122: Of course we can't go a full page without a few of these verses.  

123: The subject of this sentence evidently leaves a lot of room for wiggling.  "Sunnatullah" in Hulusi, "Divine grace" in Khattab, "Paradise" in Saheeh.  Perhaps the unattributed translation I'm referencing has the right idea to simply leave it as "it".

124: A little more of the eponymous topic, and pretty unequivocal at that.

125: More linguistic wiggling here.  حَنِيفٗاۗ is rendered "upright" and "inclining toward truth", but in the other two is left untranslatable as "Hanif".  No dictionary I tried seems to be up to the task either.

126: Our obligatory interlaud  (a word I just coined and of which I am incredibly proud) for this page.

127: I sense that we are about to get to the point . . . and I also know that I am always wrong when I sense that.

128: Oh.  I was wrong about being wrong.  And this is a delightfully concise summary of the matter.

129: A nice bit of advice to the polyamorous among us.

130: We have stayed on topic for a record of 4 verses!

131: Aaaaaaaand it's gone.  

132: I don't recall this Name before, and it stands out from the others: وَكيلًا rendered as agent, trustee, or dispoer of affairs.  This is somehow more comforting to imagine than the all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-righteous names.

133: Wouldn't it be a kick if mankind was not, in fact, the first try.

134: more familiar Divine Names here, no doubt gearing up for a warning or admonishment.

135: I love this verse, and there's no ambiguity among the translations either.

136: Unlike this verse, in which Hulusi finds room to reinsert his emphasis on the mystical nature of the letter ب.  There does indeed seem to be some room for interpretation here, and the Book mentioned in other places, ٱلۡكِتَٰبَ, is clearly different than the book mentioned here, كُتُبِهِۦ.  I may be predisposed to think that ب bears some mystical power, though.

137-139: Fairly straightforward, and mirrors can be found in other religious texts.

140: Hulusi may go too far here, extracting a reference to "mirror neurons" from this verse.  It damages his credibility, in fact, and gives him the air of an uninformed youtube video.

141-146: Continuing the admonition starting in 137, this may be this longest passage that remains on one topic so far.  One wonders exactly what situation arose to cause such emphasis.

147: I am growing unimpressed with the structure of this book.  Isolated verses such as this seem utterly meaningless.

148-149: Even verses such as these, with a clear and relevant message, lose some of their power due to the "Oh, BTW" algorithm.  It is irresistible to take verses out of context when there is no context.

150-152: These verses present a bit of a dilemma for they who would take them literally.  All Rasul must be believed, including Moses, Abraham, and Jesus, without distinction or exception.  This certainly undermines the idea of the Prohpet's hegemony.  Hulusi's approach finds the happy middle ground here.  There is no such thing as duality, after all.  One must see all aspects of the Divine to truly approach it and, one might suppose, even those Rasul who come after.

153-155: A hilarious and valid reading of the Hebrews' actions at Sinai, muddies only slightly by more pronoun fuzziness.  All four versions render this "We", but it seems that it could easily be "I", and the translators are likely erring on the side of reverence.

156-158: I was prepared for this respect of Jesus, but did not expect to find Mary similarly exalted in this book.  She is given rather more weight here and in Al-Imran than one would think.

159-161: It is interesting to think that the Mosaic Law was rather a punitive Law than a prescriptive one.

162: One is tempted to judge Hulusi harshly for inserting another paean to the letter بِ here, but he may just be on to something.  It does seem to pop up here and there, especially attached to the Divine Name, without being acknowledged in the other translations.

163-165: Rather a lengthy list of Rasuls.  One would scarcely think to give Aaron or Ishmael the same weight as Jesus or Abraham.  As for my part, I rather like the idea of adding Baháʼu'lláh and others to the list after the fact.  It is even more tempting to think who in more modern times we might add to the list.  

166: The divine name gets an extra بِ here again, but Hulusi forgoes mention of it in favor of his other obession, the equally compelling concept of HU.

167-169: A breather after all that metaphysical mystery, and a brief return to generic religious flavor text.

170: After which we get the third fascinating Sufi obsession: the Rabb.  If by the end of this project I have some working concept of بِ, HU, and Rabb, I will count this as time well spent. 

171: I would wager money that this verse alone has given rise to volumes of analysis and commentary. There's so much to unpack here.  The doctrinal points are clear enough, but the role of Mary in all of this, along with Hulusi's decision to insert HU again, slowed me down considerably.  This latter, unlike the other two Sufi mysteries, seems to have little linguistic root.

172-174: Winding down a bit.  Will there be a twist ending?

176: The only surprise is a sudden return to the topic.  There are those who say the the Quran is remarkably progressive in its treatment of women, and there are points to be made in that regard.  this summary makes it clear though:  women are important! Just not as important as men.