According to the Quran, Possession, bewitchment and evil eye do not exist! Literal analysis of Surah 113

Part 1 – A lesson in monotheistic faith and reason

Remember that in the recently published article (1) we demonstrated that the referring verse S2.V102 totally invalidates belief in witchcraft and magic. For the Koran, it is nothing more than a mass of superstitions and it defines the practices of so-called sorcerers and magicians as being nothing but illusions, charlatanism. Conversely, the Exegesis interpreted this verse as indicating that the Quran recognized a contrario the existence of witchcraft and magic. It is therefore from this perspective that she also interpreted the very well-known Surahs 113 and 114. In this article, we will study the first two verses of Surah 113, its other verses will be considered in the next article. We will also publish our analysis of Surah 114 shortly.

– Here first of all is our literal translation of Surah 113 as recently published(2):

In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the All-Merciful

Say : I take refuge with the Lord of Dawn at dawn
against the evil of what He created,
against the evil of a dark night when it grew stronger,
against the evil of those who blew on the knots,
against the evil of an envious man when he has coveted.

***

In the order of the Koranic corpus as we know it, Surah 113 is the third beginning with the imperative: “ what/say “.⁽³⁾ We also show that the two previous ones, suras 109 and 112, carry out an early communication delivering a message of an emergency nature to the first speakers of the Revelation, the Meccan polytheists. It will be the same with Surah 114. The common subject is simple and direct: the rational refutation of polytheistic idolatry by the monotheistic argument. Each of these four suras deconstructs a part of the beliefs considered to come from polytheistic idolatry. Indeed, these beliefs are opposed to the strong idea of monotheism: only God has a power that does not fall within the realm of rationality, what human reason can understand about the world. In other words, outside of Him there is no real occult power, they are only beliefs, illusions generated by irrationality. If there were occult forces at work, then God would not be the only Almighty. Also, Surah 113 cannot be understood as relating to a Koranic exorcism, to white magic, but, on the contrary, as being a denunciation of the superstitions and irrational fears which populated the imagination and the relationship to the World of the Arabs. .

– In these words: “ Say: I take refuge with the Lord of the Dawn at his rising “, v1.

The hapax falaq is a term designating the moment when the light of dawn appears above the still black horizon. This moment just precedes dawn, hence our “ Dawn at sunrise “. Polytheism is by definition a system of beliefs distributing powers and responsibilities between various entities: deities, jinns, angels, spirits, etc. This explanation of the world, as archaic as it is irrational, supposes that certain people can intervene for or against these occult forces, for good or evil, hence the recourse to shamans, sorcerers, sorcerers, unbewitchers and other intermediaries, including religious ones. . The monotheism that Revelation exposes from the beginning of Muhammad's mission presupposes the opposite thesis: 1 – in the name of divine Omnipotence, there is no other power over the World than that of God. 2 – all phenomena observable here below are rational. 3 – There is therefore no associate, no intermediary with regard to the Oneness and absolute Omnipotence of God. This monotheism combines faith and reason, faith only in God the One and the exercise of reason in explaining our world.

– Also, Koranic monotheism is defined from the outset as a rational mode in opposition to the irrational beliefs that the Koran in S2.V102 has clearly identified as resulting from polytheistic idolatry. Placing faith in it is a form of hidden polytheism. Thus, in the very name of faith in one God, the Prophet is asked not to pronounce these words for himself only, but to transmit this teaching to the polytheists: O you polytheists say “ I take refuge » in Him, the only real God, against these beliefs in these superstitions without real foundation. In other words, it is the faith in your various deities and entities that you think are active that leads you astray. But only true faith in God the True allows us to live in a world without beliefs or superstitions. So seek refuge in this faith in Him, the one God, against all this. The monotheistic believer believes that only God has power over His creation and he ” refugee » so with his “ Lord “, not against witchcraft, but against believing in it. This, in accordance with the meaning of the root 'adhā meaning seek refuge to escape something, here flee these false beliefs. We obviously note that the phrase “ Lord of Dawn at sunrise » is significant, the term falaq further qualifying, the brightness of dawn that pierces the darkness at daybreak. It is easy to understand that the image aroused is an allegory evoking the light of the dawn of monotheism and reason against the darkness of polytheism and superstitions, this therefore justifies our use of a distinctive capital letter: “ Dawn at sunrise “. The message delivered by Surah 113 is therefore: come to God alone, abandon your idolatry, your polytheism, the revelation has just appeared as the first light above the darkness of the night of your beliefs and superstitions. This is the theme of Surah 113: Polytheism and irrationality.

– In these words: “ against the evil of what He created “, v2.

First of all, it's good the evil/ash–sharr » striking men here below, and whose rational causes they did not always understand, which in part generated polytheism. This has led to this evil being attributed to various occult entities and other mysterious sources of nuisance, including witchcraft. Furthermore, if for the Koran God is Almighty, He is not responsible for the evils that affect Man since it is explicitly stipulated that “ everything good that happens to you comes from God and everything bad that happens to you comes from you », S4.V79. This Koranic postulate confirms the Koranic paradigm of Free Will available to Man, which is opposed, as we have encountered many times, by the Islamic paradigm of the Predestination of all things by God.(4) It is therefore not coherent to understand this verse as meaning “ against the evil that He (God) created “, which would further imply that the person responsible for the evil would ask that we seek refuge with Him, that is to say with the Evildoer! Our translation: “ against the evil of what He created » is strictly literal since in against/min THE wrong/sharri mā khalaqa/create the grammatical position the particle my allows two meanings: the evil that/my Or the evil of what/mhas. The verb khalaqah not meaning create that when it comes to God, two understandings are then theoretically possible: “ against the evil of what He created ” Or ” against the evil He created “. The proponents of Predestination only conceive of this second possibility and, for once, the standard translation has not driven the nail of Predestination into the cross of our destinies since we can read: “ against the evil of the beings He created “. However, appearance is deceptive, because on this essential point defended by orthodoxy one cannot believe in a careless error. In reality, we must understand according to this logic that God is not responsible for the evil done, but that He created evil in Man, an Asharite position as ambiguous as it is tautological if ever there was one. Depending on the Quranic paradigm of Free Will and the fact that God is not responsible for evil, we must therefore understand: “ I take refuge with the Lord of Dawn at his rising from evil (from) of what He created “, vs1-2. We then note that the indetermination indicated by the syntagm “ that » does not refer only to the evil that Man commits, but to an indistinctly perceived form of evil. This, as we said previously, echoes all of these occult forces that Man invents to try to explain the evils that strike him and whose origin escapes him.

– If it is said that God created this, i.e. Men and also the rest of His Creation, it is so that we seek rational causes for the evils that surround us. For example, an illness, whether known or not, is not an evil scourge or the result of an evil spell, but it always has a physiopathological cause that is rationally possible to identify. It is deeply distressing that today children with epilepsy are still tortured to drive out the demon! As if Islam were trying to go backwards into the dark times and as if the virtuous Muslim should sink into this age-old quagmire. From a strictly theological point of view, we must understand: in the name of my monotheistic faith I take refuge in the only true power that is God against all my beliefs as to the origin of evil and evils, monotheism is therefore rational. In a particular way, i.e. cultural, this means that the monotheistic believer must stop believing that evil can come from black magic practices and can similarly be treated or prevented by white magic practices. This does not mean either that God is the remedy for all evils, that by invoking Him and placing ourselves under His protection with these words no evil will reach us or that God will then resolve everything that seems to threaten us. This surah therefore does not have the slightest prophylactic value, any magical virtue, contrary to the beliefs and superstitions that Exegesis has given birth to against the very message of this surah.

– Logically, three of the most common superstitions in the culture of the Arabs of Koranic times will then be mentioned by the vs3-5 : possession, bewitchment and the evil eye. Far from validating them, Revelation reduces these beliefs to what they really are from the point of view of both monotheistic faith and reason, namely: unfounded beliefs. The fourth of these beliefs is considered by Surah 114, which from this point of view is complementary to this one. We will therefore consider in part 2 these three superstitions deeply anchored in the imagination and culture of Muslims.

Dr al Ajami

(1) https://oumma.com/selon-le-coran-la-sorcellerie-et-la-magie-nexistent-pas-analyse-litterale-de-s2-v102-103/(2) Literal translation of the Quran – the Message at the origin – by Dr al Ajamî: https://www.alajami.fr/produit/le-coran-le-message-a-lorigine/

(3) To be exact, the same is true of Surah 72, but this one is much later and the context differs.

(4) On this point, see among other occurrences S2.V184; S74.V55-56; S76.V30; S81.V29. For our critical analysis of this issue: Destiny and Free Will according to the Koran and in Islam : https://www.alajami.fr/2018/08/15/destin-et-libre-arbitr/