An article has of recent been making its way around the dark corridors of WhatsApp. In this age of jokes and pranks my first response would normally have been to dismiss this as just another crude and ill-conceived attempt at discovering humour in the language of the Qurʾān—the type of humour against which scholars pronounced the strictest and most severe censure.
However, the perilous period through which we are passing, the delicate state of so many fearful minds, and the fact that it is circulated in the name of an ʿālim—all of these factors combine to emphasize the need to dispel the deviation of this article.
The phenomenon of feverish minds desperate to find Qurʾānic sanction for their idiosyncracies is not new. The skill of manipulating the Qurʾān’s language at the most basic semantical level may be found in heterodox sects from as early as the Shīʿah to as recent as the Qādiānīs.
That the Covid-19 has presently given rise to yet another episode of twisted semantics speaks volumes of the deep impact this crisis has had on at least some febrile minds in our midst.
What this article in Arabic and English asks the reader to believe is that one of the very earliest Meccan revelations predicted the coronavirus. In other words, within days after RasūluLlah ṣallaLlāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam conveyed the opening revelation of Iqraʾ, he received revelation that at some distant point in the future there will be a great coronavirus pandemic.
Thereafter, everyone—from RasūluLlah ṣallaLlāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam, his companions, their followers, the great mufassirīn of the Ummah, and literally each and everyone who ever read and tried to understand Sūrah Muddaththir to this day—remained ignorant of the fact that the Nāqūr of the 8th āyah in this sūrah is actually a cryptic anagram (na–qu–ru = co-ro-na), and the “difficult day” of the following verse refers in fact to the period through which we are living.
This discovery, together with several other fantastical associations of elements in the sūrah, were left only for the author of this article to make. The cleansing of garments in āyah 4, for example, refers to the need to sanitize against the virus. The reference to Jahannam in āyah 28 as not letting anyone live or die is in reality a hint to the way in which Covid-19 kills, while the number 19 two verses later denotes (you guessed it) the 19 in Covid and the year of its first appearance, 2019.
I will not dwell at length on rebutting the idiocy of this abomination. Let us simply tabulate the reasons for dismissing it.
- CIRCUMSTANCES OF REVELATION
As already stated, this revelation came literally days after Iqraʾ. At this stage, of infinitely greater significance than a puny future pandemic, is the inexorable approach of Qiyāmah, heralded with the blowing of the nāqūr, a trumpet. And this exactly what every generation of mufassirīn has always understood from the āyah.
- SEMANTICS
The āyah uses the passive verb “nuqira”. This verb, when used in relation to percussion instruments, denotes striking the instrument to produce sound. When used with a wind instrument, it denotes blowing that instrument to produce sound. As the tafsīr of the Ṣaḥābah and Tābiʿīn, and virtually every mufassir shows, the “nāqūr” of this verse is a trumpet.
- THE SUNNAH
Ibn Abī Ḥātim narrates that Ibn ʿAbbās in his tafsīr of this āyah referenced the ḥadīth in which RasūluLlah ṣallaLlāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam said, “What reason have I to be at ease when the Bearer of the Trumpet has raised the Trumpet to his lips, awaiting the command to blow.”
Narrations ascribed by al-Suyūṭī to the collections of Ibn Abī Shaybah, al-Ṭabarānī and Ibn Mardawayh identify these words as being spoken by RasūluLlah ṣallaLlāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam upon the very occasion when this verse was revealed.
- REACTION
Zurārah ibn Abī Awfā was a great and pious scholar of the Tābiʿīn, pupil of the likes of Ibn ʿAbbās and Abū Hurayrah raḍiyaLlahu ʿanhumā. He was leading Fajr ṣalāh when he read this verse. So great was its impact upon him that he fell down and breathed his last.
Such reactions come, not from adumbrations of future pandemics, but from the stark reminder of the approach of the Hour.
If the reference had been to Covid-19, then shouldn’t the misguided adventurer whose flight of fantasy gave us this outlandishly ridiculous interpretation perhaps have expired upon the impact of his discovery?