#Punishing innocents for real or perceived transgressions is kind of idk bad?

[scentedluminarysoul]

Idk man, maybe I'm overstepping but I just think

That being rightfully angry at a genocide

Does not give you the right to want to genocide other people

Idk man just my personal opinion

I think genocide is never okay

[quranreadalong]

#113, Surah 20

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 113

Let’s see... where were we, again? The pharaoh is dead, the Jews are out of Egypt, and Allah is telling them how awesome he is. Right. 20:81 is where we’re starting. Allah tells the Jews not to transgress the limits he has set up for them, lest they face “My wrath”, which seems bad. But 20:82 is relatively good in comparison, saying that he is “relenting” towards those who believe and do good and pray for forgiveness etc.

Anyway, then Allah asks Moses (while he is up on the mountain getting the Ten Commandments and such) why he’s gone away from his people. Moses says that they’re still nearby, at the bottom of the mountain, he just wanted some alone time with Allah. But Allah informs him that something has happened while he’s been away.

He said: Lo! We have tried thy folk in thine absence, and As-Samiri hath misled them. 

...wait, who the hell is As-Samiri? We’ve seen the golden calf story before a bunch of times, but this guy hasn’t been mentioned until this ayah. Did we pick up some Samaritan guy offscreen? A little help here, Ibn Kathir...?

Muhammad bin Ishaq reported from Ibn `Abbas that he said, "As-Samiri was a man from the people of Bajarma, a people who worshipped cows. He still had the love of cow worshipping in his soul. However, he acted as though he had accepted Islam with the Children of Israel. His name was Musa bin Zafar.''

Yeah that was the opposite of helpful, thanks. I have no clue who the supposed cow-worshipers of “Bajarma” are supposed to be. A footnote in al-Tabari’s history says it was in what is now northern Syria or Iraq. But then how the hell did he end up traveling with Hebrew slaves out of Egypt and into Israel?! Lo! Let us look at another opinion, please. The Jalals and several others translate his name as “the Samaritan”, as in someone from Samaria in the modern-day West Bank, which seems far more plausible... until you realize that Samaria does not yet exist in this part of the Biblical timeline, as the Hebrews have not gotten to the Promised Land yet. Uh...

Well... let’s assume that Mohammed didn’t quite understand the admittedly complicated timeline and assume he meant “the Samaritan”. Who is this guy and what has he done? Moses stomps back into camp and demands answers. His people tell him that the Samaritan told them to melt down all their golden jewelry, and then...

Then he produced for them a calf, of saffron hue, which gave forth a lowing sound. 

Then he... uh... made it into the shape of a cow, which mooed. Damn impressive, really, especially given that they’re in the middle of nowhere. Quite hard to hand-shape molten gold! But why would “the Samaritan” do such a thing? Well, I do believe there is an answer for this. In the Book of Hosea, chapter 8, we read the following:

They have set up kings, but not by Me; They have appointed princes, but I did not know it. With their silver and gold they have made idols for themselves, That they might be cut off.  He has rejected your calf, O Samaria, saying, "My anger burns against them!" How long will they be incapable of innocence? For from Israel is even this! A craftsman made it, so it is not God; Surely the calf of Samaria will be broken to pieces.

Remember in the history lesson I talked about Jeroboam and how he made golden calf idols? And remember also how Samaria was the capital of Jeroboam’s kingdom? Yeah, that’s what this is about. Now, uh... according to the Biblical timeline this happened like 500+ years after the Moses story, but this clearly seems to be where Mohammed got the idea about “a Samaritan” making a golden calf idol from, even though this person is not present in the Exodus version, nor are Samaritans a thing yet.

An unanswerable question is whether Mohammed intentionally spliced these unrelated stories together or if he just got confused and thought they were about the same incident. The latter is certainly possible, as he’s done such things before, but there’s evidence for the former as well. In the Exodus version, all of this is instead done by Aaron, Moses’ brother. Aaron is later forgiven for it, but the change seems intentional. Mohammed wasn’t a fan of character flaws in holy men and tended to write many of the prophets’ “moments of weakness” out of the Quran’s narrative.

...but it’s equally likely he was just confused. The whole history of Israel/Judah, like the stuff from Kings and Chronicles, is totally skipped over in the Quran so I don’t think he knew much about it, and it’s totally possible he heard “Samaria built a golden calf” and assumed it was about this story. Idk!!

Anyway, the golden calf was, of course, not a real god. Unlike his complicit counterpart in the Exodus version, the Quran’s Aaron tells the Hebrews to stop it, but they ignore him because Moses isn’t there. When Moses hears about this, he gets angry at Aaron for not stopping them, but again Aaron pleads for forgiveness. Neutral if non-Biblical. Relenting, Moses then turns his anger on the Samaritan gentleman in question, asking what the hell he thought he was doing. He cryptically replies in 20:96:

I perceived what they perceive not, so I seized a handful from the footsteps of the messenger, and then threw it in. Thus my soul commended to me. 

Tafsir authors think that this refers to the Samaritan seeing Gabriel riding his horse, then scooping up the dust on which the horse had trodden, and throwing it into the mix. Thus the magic mooing, I guess? I dunno. The Quran doesn’t really specify what he “perceived” or what he “seized a handful of” or who the “messenger” is, so that guess is as good as any.

I did notice that the Babylonian Talmud records a story in which Satan appears in the Jews’ camp, sending a storm to confuse them while Moses is on the mountain, trying to convince them that Moses was dead by showing them an “image of Moses’ corpse in a cloud”. I have no idea if that’s even remotely connected to this story or not, but at least there’s an idea of some otherworldly being being present at the time.

Regardless, Moses essentially gives the Samaritan the punishment of being an untouchable, and tells him that he’s gonna wreck his dumb cow statue.

(Moses) said: Then go! and lo! in this life it is for thee to say: Touch me not! and lo! there is for thee a tryst thou canst not break. Now look upon thy god of which thou hast remained a votary. Verily we will burn it and will scatter its dust over the sea. 

Here’s the thing about the Samaritans. According to them (some still exist, not many though; forced conversions to both Christianity and Islam greatly reduced their numbers), they are simply descendants of the fallen Kingdom of Israel. They follow the Pentateuch, just like “regular Jews”, but do not follow the other books of the Bible. There are a few differences between their version and the “regular” version, but most of it is the same. (As I said in the history lesson, it seems that while the bulk of the Pentateuch was completed in the first post-exile century, editing of the text continued for centuries. The editing produced thousands of grammatical differences between the two, though the stories themselves are virtually identical with one exception.) So it seems that after the exiles returned from Babylon, their northern neighbors took on their holy book without much religious strife.

But problems began to develop between the two. The issue that seems to have precipitated this feud was the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. The Book of Ezra casts them in a very negative light, saying that they clashed with the returned exiles and tried to stop the new temple from being built. This was because the Samaritans already had their own holy site, called Mount Gerizim, which was in Samaria--in the modern-day city of Nablus. And they weren’t interested in Jerusalem taking its place. This is, in fact, the main difference between Samaritans and Jews: the emphasis on Gerizim or Jerusalem, respectively. According to Ezra, the Samaritans delayed the completion of the temple for nearly 40 years, and the relationship between the two communities was permanently damaged.

As such, other parts of the Bible (written by the returned Judean exiles) give the Samaritans a rather unfavorable origin story. It says that they are not Israelites by blood--that they are polytheists who were brought in to Israel by the Assyrians to replace its native population. (For what it’s worth, judging by genetics, the Samaritans are descended both from native Israelites and resettled people brought in by Assyria, so both are kind of correct.) While Jews still begrudgingly acknowledged that the Samaritans followed essentially the same religious rules as they themselves did, they were labelled not fully Jewish. Intermarriage with Samaritans was banned and from then on the communities became quite separate, with Samaritans regarding the Jews as mistaken and the Jews looking down upon the Samaritans as lesser. Thus the story of the good Samaritan in the Gospels and the general idea that they should not be engaged, etc.

So I guess Mohammed turned this into their original sin or something even though Samaria didn’t exist then?? Anyway Allah is god etc and that’s the end of this very dumb story. We’ll stop there.

NEXT TIME: Doom, doom, Iblis, doom

The Quran Read-Along: Day 113

Ayat: 19

Good: 1 (20:82)

Neutral: 17 (20:83-99)

Bad: 1 (20:81)

Kuffar hell counter: 0

⇚ previous day | next day ⇛