#Where else my art hath been wtf???

[bitedownme]

I'm gonna cry (neu????), I said I am kinda alright with my art reposted IF I am notified about it or something. But I found one in character ai of all places (by methods I won't disclose, I don't use this thing). I would've been more fine with my art reposted on Twitter, but I guess?????

[quranreadalong]

#72, Surah 11

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 72

The bulk of today’s section is gonna be about ya boy Noah.

As we’ve seen many times already, the Quranic Noah is somewhat different from the Biblical one, because he’s based on Talmudic traditions instead. Muslim!Noah is a prophet and a “warner” like all the other prophets of the Quran, sent to tell his polytheistic brethren that they need to stop being polytheists or else Allah will kill them all. Again, in Genesis, this does not happen. But the endings of the stories are the same, with the whole flood-kills-everyone thing.

11:25 starts us off. “I’m just here to tell y’all,” Noah says, “that you need to stop the polytheistic nonsense or else Allah gonna bring the doom hammer down on ur heads”. That’s neutral and bad, respectively.

Noah’s people were not impressed. 11:27:

The chieftains of his folk, who disbelieved, said: We see thee but a mortal like us, and we see not that any follow thee save the most abject among us, without reflection. We behold in you no merit above us - nay, we deem you liars. 

Why do the evildoing polytheists always come across as so reasonable in the Quran?

Noah says in reply: “Look... I’m fr a prophet and y’all are dumb if you don’t believe me. I’m just here for the people who are open to believing me. I’m not an angel or anything but you really should listen to what I’m telling you.”

The disbelievers are still unconvinced in 11:32. They tell him to bring on The Doom, if he’s being truthful: “now bring upon us that wherewith thou threatenest us, if thou art of the truthful”, which is the same thing the doomed disbelievers always say. Really weird how all of these stories of prophets and disbelievers have the exact same dialogue!

Anyway, it’s all neutral dialogue thus far. There are some bad ones after that, though: Noah tells the disbelievers that they can never escape Allah’s punishment when he chooses to bring it upon them, and he points out that it may be “Allah’s will” to keep them from believing him. The polytheists are presumably very confused at this point and surely think that either Noah is insane or Allah is insane.

Noah then absolves himself of his brethren’s crimes of disbelief, and Allah tells him:

No-one of thy folk will believe save him who hath believed already.

Wtf was the point of this whole exercise if Allah knew that?! Bad! Also bad is the next ayah, where Allah announces his intent to drown basically everyone and tells Noah to get started on his giant boat. The evildoing disbelievers make fun of Noah for doing so, but Noah makes fun of them, since they’re going to die and then go to hell LOL! Kuffar hell counter: 1, and all bad.

That part is also from the Babylonian Talmud, by the way:

when Noah rebuked them and spoke words to them that were as hard as fiery flints, they derided him. Said they to him, ‘Old man, what is this ark for?’ — He replied, 'The Holy One, blessed be He, will bring a flood upon you.’

Then the flood begins and the ark is loaded up with two of each animal and the few non-disbelieving people, and they set off into the water. (That last ayah states that Allah is “merciful” as he’s drowning everyone lmao.)

I guess that part is neutral.... the verses themselves, I mean, not the whole story, which is obviously terrible on its face. The part after the flood is mostly straight from the Genesis account, but there is one difference, namely that Noah’s son dies:

And it sailed with them amid waves like mountains, and Noah cried unto his son - and he was standing aloof - O my son! Come ride with us, and be not with the disbelievers. He said: I shall betake me to some mountain that will save me from the water. (Noah) said: This day there is none that saveth from the commandment of Allah save him on whom He hath had mercy. And the wave came in between them, so he was among the drowned. 

For whatever reason, one of Noah’s sons is not on the ark, and Noah tells him to climb aboard. (It’s unclear exactly what the... geographical situation is here, since the water is already rising so fast that the waves “are like mountains”, so where is Noah’s son standing and how are they able to communicate with each other so easily? Lo! Let us ignore that part.) The son says he’ll just go stand on the top of some mountain, Noah says it won’t save him, the son doesn’t listen, and then a wave crashes over him and he drowns to death. I’ll put those two down as neutral and bad respectively.

This story is not from any Jewish or Christian text that I can find, and the dead son is never named--I dunno if Mohammed meant for it to be one of Noah’s three Biblical sons (Shem, Ham, and Japheth--though it couldn’t have been Shem because his descendants are in the stories of Hud etc) or if this was an additional unnamed son. Later on, we’ll see that Noah’s wife was also an evildoer condemned to hell, though it’s unclear if she died before, during, or after the great flood.

Anyway everyone dies and then Allah makes the water go away, leaving the ark on the side of a mountain called Mount Judi, which is in the far east of Turkey. Mohammed got that one from a Syriac Christian tradition, which identified Noah’s landing-place as the same mountain; the Genesis account says that it was somewhere in that general region.

Once he’s safe, Noah begs Allah to give his son back to him. Allah tells Noah to shut up and says his son deserved to die because he was “of evil conduct” (bad!). Noah sadly accepts this and asks Allah’s forgiveness for daring to ask such a question. Allah does forgive him and tells him he can go down from the mountain and start living on land again:

O Noah! Go thou down (from the mountain) with peace from Us and blessings upon thee and some nations (that will spring) from those with thee. (There will be other) nations unto whom We shall give enjoyment a long while and then a painful doom from Us will overtake them. 

Aaaand that’s the segue to stories about those “other nations” who have painful dooms, meaning Hud’s people and friends. Bad. We’ll talk about them next time. I’ll hold off on the kuffar hell counter, because as we know, the “doom” that overtakes them is murder (followed by hell), not specifically hell itself. So!

NEXT TIME: Hud! Saleh’s camel! And more!!!

The Quran Read-Along: Day 72

Ayat: 24

Good: 0

Neutral: 14 (11:25, 11:27-32, 11:35, 11:40-42, 11:44-45, 11:47)

Bad: 10 (11:26, 11:33-34, 11:36-39, 11:43, 11:46, 11:48)

Kuffar hell counter: 1 (11:38-39)

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