An-Nisa

It is surely vanity that I enjoy the holiness of my own letter B this much.  I do not, however, entirely endorse Hulusi's interjection of it here.

1: If this verse is to be any indication, along with the epigraph, Hulusi is growing more comfortable intersting Sufi interpretation in the text--and not always with appropriate denotation.  Which is not to say that his ideas cannot be found in this excellent verse.  Merely that, as in all literature, explication can weaken the message and detract from the joy.

2-3: Hilarious and revealing that Women are given the epithet اليَتامىٰ (orphans) here, and there is no dispute among three translators that it is indeed the correct rendering.

4: Not entirely clear what fiscal policies were in place.  We in the West think of a dowry as a gift to the wife's parents, not to herself.

5-6: Are we not then referring to marriage, but to actual orphans, or to a man's sisters after their parents' death?

7: This is no doubt one of the verses people have in mind when they refer to the Quran's relative liberality toward women.  All things are relative, after all, and this is at least better than what Moses would grant.

8,9: Perhaps a corollary of the so-called "Golden Rule", flawless in its reasoning and appeal to compassion and fellow feeling

10: . . . but followed up, of course, with a more practical appeal to fear and loathing.

11: Again, liberal and feminist . . . by comparison. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the dubious math of this portion gave rise to plenty of conflict across the centuries.  The last part of this verse is the most interesting to me, though.  What a lot of conflict this could have prevented if common in the West!

12: I am extremely curious to know how many rich Muslim women there are in the world.  If this law were executed faithfully, there should be quite a lot. 

13,14: . . . of course every edict has to be thus punctuated.  

15: Again, extremely liberal by contemporary standards.  Not only are double the witnesses required by the Hebrew god necessary, but the punishment is relatively lenient.

16: A rare moment where Hulusi's liberty with the text takes him backward.  He translates this verse as saying "two men," but all other translations, and the dictionary, agree that وَاللَّذانِ is "any two people".

17, 18: Oh, another lovely distinction.  Repentance here is not some easy out.  It is much more specific, and the type of silliness we see in Christianism is specifically prohibited.

19, 20: I wonder if there was any resistance to this proscription at the time it was given.  We need only take a look at the fragile masculinity on display today to infer how easily it would have been to perceive it as an assault on the patriarchy, and trigger male defensiveness.

21-26: It would be easy, blinded by the relative liberality toward women and respect of their rights, to lose sight of some key facts:

• "You" in this book means "Men."  Women are the objects of this discourse, not the subjects.
• Marriage is still treated as an exchange of goods and services, and this transactionality only reinforces the objectification.
• No mention is made of women's right of refusal, insofar as goods cannot decline to be purchased.

Nonetheless, it is even more striking than I expected how much leverage women are given.  How on earth is it justified, then, to deny women rights on such a level as is seen in modern Islamic countries?  Where did the leap from "Treat women justly or burn forever" to "Who said you could drive, bitch?" happen?

27-28: or, "Misery loves company".

29-30: An interesting equivalence between wealth and life.

31: Rather a more reasonable and charitable demand than that of the Christian god.

32: This verse seems to contradict itself.  At first it makes the reasonable suggestion not to covet, for all things come from Allah.  This is based on the assumption that Allah gives unequally, however.  The following assertion that all get what they earn loses its way.

33: Seemingly a non sequitir.  If patterns hold true, this will be revisited in a few verses.

34-35: And here is the answer to the seeming contradiction in verse 32.  When it exhorts the reader not to covet another's position, it really means "Don't feel bad because your husband beats you.  You deserved it."

36-42: It had been a while since we got a warning against duality, but here it is.  Hulusi's nuanced interpretation makes the connection between unity and generosity rather easier to follow than other more literal renderings.  It also highlights the real problem with arrogance: it is rooted in duality.

40: Ok, this really seems like a bud that will bear fruit later.  All three renderings give لَدُنهُ as "Himself" or some variation thereof.  The dictionary meaning, however, is "elastic" or even "spandex" in one dictionary.  Furthermore, none of the possible translation given in the reverse, from the English "himself", are anywhere close.  I need to keep an eye out for this in the future, because it could be marvelously revealing.

43-45: I have come to instinctively assume the Prophet means "Jews'n'Christians" Whenever he uses this expression.  Interesting that Hulusi does not make his usual choice of leaving the Names untranslated when it comes to نَصيرًا, especially notable because his rendering emphasizes the وَكَفىٰ in the same verse.  Hulusi doesn't even bother to include the former in his comprehensive introduction, as he does with the latter.  

46: Yes, of course.  As predicted above.

47: Hulusi's explanation of these creative curse is as good as any, I suppose, but it does not seem to capture the essence of it.

46-57 This lengthy diatribe seems completely unrelated to the rest of the book.  The generous explanation is that An-Nisa, and even the whole of the Quran, is really about one thing, namely "one thing", and everything is to be read on some level as an invective against duality.  A less generous reading might be "The Prophet let his anger run away with him."

58: "Trusts" here seems to be used in a way other than "credibility", but neither the three renderings I am referencing, nor the dictionary itself is any help in parsing it.

59-60: Taghut appears again, and my fuzziness on the concept is palliated by complete disagreement between the three renderings. If a figure other than of speech, a fascinating one.

61-70 And another lengthy diatribe against "Jews'n'Christians".  It might be fruitful to keep track of these digressions.

69: I'm suddenly quite curious about the distinction between الرَّسولَ and النَّبِيّينَ. One would be tempted to say that the former was Muhammad, and the latter lesser prophets, if the latter were not pluralized earlier in 64.

71-77: And now a call to war! This book has gone right off the rails of its original topic.

78: This is pretty sound reasoning, and gets to the crux of the matter: there is basically one message in the Quran, and it is very simple and very difficult.

 79: Hulusi keeps adding things to make his point, but they are not in the text.  It seems that he most often does it to emphasize his pet mystic concept: the various powers of the Names in our own selves.

Speaking of which:

Running list of the Names referred to (started late, so possibly incomplete): 

Rahim: merciful

Aleem: all-knowing

Aliy: exalted

Kabir: great

Habir: all-aware

Afuw: all-excusing

Ghafur: all forgiving

Waliyy:  ally

Aziz: mighty

Hakim: wise

Sami: all-hearing

Basir: all-seeing

Tawwab: clement

Muqeet: watchful

Hasib: reckoner

80: none of which are to be confused with the Rasul, who is somehow both the topic and the addressee of this verse.

81: And neither does Wakil here seem to have the same weight as the above names.  

82: I will say that there do not seem to be the same inconsistencies in this text as in others of its class--no doubt due to its relative recency and singular purported authorship.  this is not to say, however, that it does not occassionally speak out of both sides of its mouth.

83: And we are back here to the curious question of the addressee.  Based both on plurality and content here, The Rasul does not seem to be addressed directly.  These shifts are disorienting, but may hold a key to some larger perspective.

84: A nice verse, and one I'm tempted to frame in my familiar paradigm of process v. product.

85: The line between a divine name and a simple descriptor is blurry. Capitalization of Muqeet here in one version, and transliteration in another, seems to argue for the former.  Simple lower-case translation in another version argues for the latter.  

86: And the same here with Hasib.  I do like this sentiment, though I can't imagine many humans being able to bring themselves to do it.

87: The suffix هُ here is given special treatment in Hulusi's rendering.  It makes me terribly curious about the semantic content of it.  It doesn't seem to have any innately.  I need to be on the lookout for incidences of the Divine Name without it, or it as a suffix in other contexts.

88: The idea of divine misdirection , here and in other similar texts *coughthebiblecough* is wildly grating to me.  Is belief a matter of divine selection, or of choice?  It seems to be a terribly important distinction, and this is not the first time this text has fallen on what I consider to be the unsustainable side of it.

89: If they have been led astray by divine will, then how would it be possible for them to reverse course in this way? The dichotomy has the aroma of convenient selectivity about it.

90: Another surprisingly progressive sentiment, and one that seems ignored by modern Islam.

91: This verse, on the other hand, has a fascinating blank space in the middle.  Those whom readers are given sanction to kill with impunity are those who have given into temptation, but the three texts I'm referencing here are at odds with regard to the nature of that temptation, and each sees fit to insert a non-textual explanation: polytheism, disbelief or hostility variously.

92-93: The idea of a hostile believer is somewhat prescient here.  At the time this book was written, which seems to be rather later than its placement in the canon would indicate, were cracks already beginning to appear among the followers of Islam?  Or is this a reference to their perpetual foes the Meccans?

94: A return to the ideas of v.90, with the same skeptical eyebrow from this reader.