What does God mean by that?

When it comes to the interpretation of the Quran, there is a tendency by some to want it to mean what appears “right” to them. If we as humans could navigate the complete quagmire of our existence then there would have been no need for a guide from the Creator. This relatively new phenomena among Muslims, embodied in “There is no Hell”, is different than the earlier so-called “different interpretations” ruse. The earlier misadventure is more rooted in a lack of conviction to give thought, as instructed by God in the Quran, repeatedly. This later “error correction” urge is mostly as a result of getting influenced by transitory narratives.

As a first step, we must accept our design limitations. This in itself is a humbling experience. Those on the cutting edge of inquiry among us, the mathematicians and physicist are better at it. In fact, whenever they have found themselves cornered, the practitioners have done exactly that, acknowledge the limits of their/our ability to discover. Hence, Hilbert’s dream was shot down by Godel and Turin. In a parallel effort, Whitehead and Russel had a go at the fundamentals of mathematics and kind of gave up without actually proving that 1+1=2. All this sounds counter-intuitive and yet it is the stark reality we all must face.

The other important design constraint for a living organism is time. We have limited time to nail down our perception of reality. Since none of us know everything we have adopted a hack. The hack is that we figure out somethings for ourselves and then we fill the gaps with what others have supposedly figured out. In other words, we inadvertently fill large parts of our reality with beliefs. Granted if one were to follow up on these beliefs we believe we can get to the bottom of it but it is still a belief all around. Throw in a bit of Dunning-Kruger and there are no limits to what kind of reality we can end up with. Since we are already doing it, won’t it make more sense to use sources that are demonstrably more certain?

The ideal scenario would be to use one single source that is verifiable beyond reproach and once verified there is no fear of reaching wrong conclusions. That is if we also employee unbiased rational thought working through it.

That brings us to the primary source of Islam, the Quran. Those among us who have taken out the time to verify it as the very word of God or at least of a being possesses God-like intelligence, have benefited enormously. God in the Quran points out this limitation in terms of lack of our ability to grasp certain notions and/or realities. God in those cases uses something that we are already familiar with in order to give us some sense of the ungraspable. Quran 3:7. More on that can be found on my post on the issue. God goes on to distinguish between those who have more knowledge compared to those who have less when it comes to understanding the whole message.

Coming back to the issue. Most try to sell the “doesn’t sound right” approach in a couple of ways. One is through the in vogue “New old Arabic”. That is, they usually first make up their mind and then go looking for linguistic gymnastics. If we were to ignore the contradictions caused by constantly running to the root words, one can make anything mean anything in the Quranic Arabic. The resulting “new old Arabic” has a token semblance to the classical Arabic, let alone the colloquial Arabic. Where almost nothing means what an Arabic speaker will find in the text of the Quran.

The other way that the narrative in question is adopted is through the “time capsule” approach. Basically, that means the Quran was revealed to the people of that time and doesn’t apply to us in the same way that it applied to them. Hence, we can basically pick and choose what we think applies to us and what doesn’t. The problem with this particular narrative is that it directly contradicts the word of God. Not only that, it creates contradictions within the word of God. To say it doesn’t is to say the fundamental laws of logic stand suspended.

Case in point is Quran 2:125 where in one short verse standing doesn’t mean standing, Circumbulation doesn’t mean Circumambulation, bowing doesn’t mean bowing, prostration doesn’t mean prostration and Salat doesn’t mean Salat. Go figure. In extreme cases, a Mosque ceases to be a physical structure and verses like Quran 22:40 are rendered incomprehensible. Where monasteries by implication don’t mean monasteries anymore and churches and synagogues all lose meaning.

Yes, there have been attempts to distort certain words/notions in the Quran. But most of them are isolated words taken out of context. Words like Ayat, Al-Hikma, Zina, Siddiqoon, Khimar, Zeenat, darab, zulufann etc needs looking up no doubt. But here is the thing, these mostly isolated words can easily be identified and corrected. The real issue has to do with these mass and wholesale distortions. 

Why did God declare that Quran’s message will be protected and preserved? Granted God’s powers are unlimited but God makes it a point that the Quran is in clear Arabic. Quran is not a jigsaw puzzle that must be put together in every verse. If it was so then that in itself will be a contradiction. And more disturbingly, the message will no longer be preserved as per the claim of the Quran.

I will repeat my earlier expressed take, Quran is clear on its Universality and timelessness. We are the ignorant ones who repeatedly fail to differentiate between the fixed laws for unchanging needs and freedom to formulate laws based on changing needs. The latter by its very nature is amendable and/or can be deleted from the books but the former is fixed in the book of God. The most important factor that frames both is the environment where both can be justly obeyed and enforced.

In the case of “There is no Hell” or it’s close cousin, “It is not ‘reasonable’ to believe that once in hell it is forever”. Some will even ignore anticipation of that kind of conclusion by God where clear verses warn about reaching exactly those conclusions. Statements like “A merciful God will not create Hell” are nothing but attempts to paint God in one’s own image.

I have attempted to explain why this is a reasonable rationale for Hell and what does staying in it forever means elsewhere on the blog.

Briefly, the concept of forever or a version of infinity is not something we can wrap our head around in a meaningful way. The notion of infinity started out as a philosophical concept and during the last hundred years or so more precise formalism were proposed. In spite of the fuzziness, infinity is a very useful tool, without it, there would be no calculus or set theory. And without these two, we might as well go back to the nineteenth century. We need terms like “forever” to make sense of time. In this case permanence.

Hence, Paradise seems to be the default destination and those left out of it will be those who failed to escape the fire, so to speak. ‘Forever’ in that state is just a state as opposed to an infinite number of years. Without Hell and Paradise, nothing makes sense, not really. In fact, being sent to Hell and staying there for a limited time and then crossing over to Heaven makes even less sense. If one were to bring in the eternity angle back into it then most everybody will opt for it. I don’t know about you but sitting next to Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot sipping wine is not my idea of Paradise.

Truth must be inherently timeless. If we were to take the position that the Quran’s perfection and completeness, time-stamped with “this day”, was limited to a certain era then we must be prepared to another possibility, the possibility of what we consider “right” and applicable to us in this era to be false.