Literalists Have Turned The Quran Into A Jail Manual
By
Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
6 December
2022
The Quran -Maniac, Nay, Quran -Brandishing, Muslims
Condescend And Judge Other Muslims And Call Them Heretics And Kafir If They
Don't Believe In The Quran's Divinity, Authenticity And Veracity.
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A few days
ago, I was reading Yunus Emre (1238 CE-1328 CE), a great Turkish folk poet and
Islamic Sufi mystic who wrote in old Anatolian Turkish. In one of his mystic
poems, Emre wrote, " Should I remain stuck in Quranic Heaven and Hell,
Hellfire, Olhaf'is (Turkish for Hereafter), Day of Judgement, among others or
love my Lord without these unnecessary conditions and finally merge into Him?
''
In other
words, Emre was least bothered about Quranic diktats and impositions on those
who love Allah. He says, " Let me love Allah every moment. Don't narrate
to me the scriptural strictness." Elsewhere, he writes, " I'm not a
Rila'az (Hafiz-e-Quran in old Turkish). I don't need to remember Quranic
verses and even follow them. They're for the beginners. All I need is the
purity of heart, sincerity of faith and piety of worship." So apt!
Even after
nearly a millennium, Emre's words carry the Truth. In fact, his words are all
the more relevant in these times when literalists have turned their Quran into
a jail manual. These literalists have given themselves the exclusive right to
be the sole custodians and chosen knowers of Quran and Islam.
The Quran -maniac,
nay, Quran -brandishing, Muslims condescend and judge other Muslims and call
them heretics and Kafir if they don't believe in the Quran's divinity,
authenticity and veracity.
Mansur-Al-Hallaj,
famous for his ecstatic proclamation of An-al-Haq (I'm the Truth), never
believed in esoteric and eschatological beliefs. He believed in Fana
(Merging) and nothing else. Was he a less Muslim than today's literalists,
who're no better than village mullahs and medieval thugs? The extraordinarily
repetitive Koran often admonishes its followers and threatens them with eternal
damnation or hellfire. Will any sage and sagacious mind take these roguish
threats as god's words and edicts? The way the Quran has been compiled and
culled, its Allah appears to be no better than the megalomaniac god of the Old
Testament. Richard Dawkins writes in his book, ' The god Delusion ' that,
" The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character
in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving
control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic,
homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential,
megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
The way,
you literalist Muslims follow your Quran in toto, no wonder, you too have
relegated your Allah to the level of the god of the Old Testament. After all,
what's your Quran? There's nothing new in it. It's a hotchpotch and disorderly
gleaning from the earlier scriptures of Judaism and Christianity. There's no
cherry-picking. Be at least a good Muslim if you cannot become a good human and
refrain from getting into hair-splitting details of your holy book/s. Live
peacefully and let others also live properly. You guys have already turned the
world into hell. What more hellfire do you expect?
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A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul
is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He
has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several
languages including Persian.
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-society/literalists-quran-jail-manual-/d/128567
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