Stories are told in every culture, in every age, because they serve multiple purposes. They serve as memory, as expression, as dream or aspiration, as moral dilemmas, and they also serve to shape minds into the best mould possible.
I am usually a bit suspicious of people who like to cite religious stories because they rarely examine their own motivations and rarely open to debate. Hadiths are misused as a way of making us toe a line that serves to maintain those who already have too much power instead of helping us build better world cultures.
So perhaps I should state upfront that when I received ‘Tales from the Quran and Hadith’, I read the book not as a Muslim but as a curious human, and as a woman who believes in asking questions. Stories embedded in religion — any religion — ought to not to make the listener think harder about right and wrong, about choices and consequences, rather than absolve the listener of all responsibility of thinking for themselves.
This is a slim volume, written simply enough to cater to both children and adults. What I like most about Rana Safvi’s selection is their relevance. They serve to remind Muslims as well as practitioners of other faiths — or even atheists and agnostics — of the core values that gave rise to Islam, and the cultural context that preceded it.
Male and female scholars and preachers love to lecture us about obedience, women in particular, and the need for shame, both physical and psychological. This is in contravention of the facts of the Prophet Mohammad’s life. After all, his first and most intense relationship was with Khadija. She had been married before and not just once. She inherited a successful business and through her management skills, and her luck in finding an honest employee like the young Mohammad (he was not yet a prophet), her wealth grew. She was nearly 40 and he was barely 25. It was she who liked him first. It was she who initiated, sending feelers through a friend.
When he was frightened after his encounter with the angel Gabriel, he went to his wife for comfort. It was she who knew who to go to for interim spiritual guidance. He stayed loyal to her throughout her life. His later wives were also mostly widows, and in one case, a divorcee (who initiated a divorce rather than just accept one). The Prophet did not castigate women for being ‘forward’ if they sent proposals.
How then have we reached a point where no religious leader encourages a girl to be financially independent and choose a husband for herself? Nor do elders in the family persuade their sons to marry older women, divorcees or widows. Young men are constantly sold the idea of very young virgins as an ideal of womanhood when their ideal should be Khadija.
There are stories of Mohammad’s grandfather and father too and they offer interesting insights into Arab culture and the political rivalries that existed much before Islam came into being. In fact, many stories are pre-Islamic, including the one about the terrible armies of Yajuj and Majuj (Gog and Magog) that are prophecied to overrun the earth before the day of judgment. Other stories come from the Old Testament.
I was familiar with some of these stories but reading them again in simple language, I was surprised to find that their message is very broad in its import. The story of Jonah/Yunus who is swallowed by a whale, for instance, is a story about humility on the surface. And yet, in Safvi’s retelling, there is no doubt that God punishes his own prophet for cursing people, for seeking to bring destruction upon the land. The task of a prophet is not to hurt people not matter how righteous his rage.
There are tales of hubris, like the story of Iram, a paradise on earth that was created but could not be gained, and the dangers of moral superiority as presented in the story of the angels who are convinced they, unlike man, shall be untouched by temptation. Even the story of creation has Iblis/Satan proving to God that man, accorded a stature higher than angels, will disobey the Creator.
Reading these stories relating to the three major monotheistic faiths, I was also reminded of other books I’ve read in recent years. In simple English, we are introduced to the creation myths of various tribes in India, such as ‘Santal Creation Stories’ and Uddipana Goswami’s ‘Where We Come From, Where We Go’. What is common to all is a desire to understand humanity, our purpose, our failures — anger, jealousy, greed, pride.
You don’t have to be a believer to acknowledge the seeds of conflict and sorrow that are embedded in your soul. Readers of the Quran and Hadith stories may dwell upon this and also recall that we have been granted free will. Those who crush the freedom of another, man or woman, do so in defiance of God, in defiance of their own religion.
Reading this book will also bring reminders of cruel choices, like the story of Hajira/Hagar, a slave who is first impregnated to make up for the childlessness of Sarah, and then left to die of thirst in the desert with her new born son. One can interpret the story of Abraham’s vicissitudes, his visions, the decision of sacrificing his son, in multiple ways. It is not even necessary to draw a moral conclusion. It is enough to reflect upon the dilemmas that confront human beings, the terrible hardships and choices we face, and the price we pay individually and collectively.
The author is a writer and poet based in India