Verse 3:7 is an interesting verse in the Quran that talks about how some verses in the Quran are direct and the foundation of the book, but other verses of the Quran are allegorical or multi-meaning. Interestingly, verse 3:7 itself can be interpreted in two different ways depending on where you put the period–(ie. where do you pause full stop before continuing)
One place to put the period:
[Quran 3:7] He sent down to you this scripture, containing straightforward verses—which constitute the essence of the scripture—as well as multiple-meaning or allegorical verses. Those who harbor doubts in their hearts will pursue the multiple-meaning verses to create confusion, and to extricate a certain meaning. None knows the true meaning thereof except GOD and those well founded in knowledge.[Period]. They say, “We believe in this—all of it comes from our Lord.” Only those who possess intelligence will take heed.
The other place you can put the period:
[Quran 3:7] He sent down to you this scripture, containing straightforward verses—which constitute the essence of the scripture—as well as multiple-meaning or allegorical verses. Those who harbor doubts in their hearts will pursue the multiple-meaning verses to create confusion, and to extricate a certain meaning. None knows the true meaning thereof except GOD. [Period]. And those well founded in knowledge they say, “We believe in this—all of it comes from our Lord.” Only those who possess intelligence will take heed.
These two locations of placing the period change the meaning/understanding of that verse itself. Either “no one knows the true meaning except God”, or “no one knows the true meaning except God and those well founded in knowledge”.
The Study Quran by Seyyed Nasr et al. highlights this:
And none know its interpretation save God and those firmly rooted in knowledge. They say, “We believe in it; all is from our Lord”: An alternate pause in the Arabic would yield the translation, “And none know its interpretation save God. And those firmly rooted in knowledge say, ‘We believe in it; all is from our Lord.’” This reading reserves all interpretation of the mutashābih to God; the firmly rooted (rāsikhūn) are then characterized merely by their faith in it. However, as the commentator al-Thaʿlabī points out, in practice all schools of thought interpret the entire Quran; despite declarations that only God knows the interpretation of mutashābih verses, they pass over no aspect of the Quran in silence, though degrees of uncertainty about their meanings remain. Some say this means, “We believe in the mutashābih, but only act by the muḥkam” (Ṭ).
However, I have recently encountered verses in the Quran that demonstrate that the correct understanding of 3:7 is the first one (none knows the true meaning except God and those with knowledge):
[Quran 29:41] The allegory (mathalu-مَثَلُ) of those who accept other masters beside GOD is that of the spider and her home; the flimsiest of all homes is the home of the spider, if they only knew.*
[Quran 29:42] GOD knows full well that whatever they worship besides Him are really nothing. He is the Almighty, the Most Wise.
[Quran 29:43] We cite these examples (al-mathalu-لۡأَمۡثَـٰلُ) for the people, and none appreciate them except the knowledgeable.*
Here, the Quran is citing an allegory of a spider at her home, saying it is flimsiest of all homes–and this is the allegory of those who take other masters beside God as a lord. But then, the Quran says the knowledgeable ones will understand this allegory! If we were to interpret 3:7 to mean “only God knows the correct interpretation of the allegorical verses”, then this directly contradicts verse 29:43 which says that God cites these allegories (mathalu) so that people with knowledge can understand them! Therefore those with knowledge can also understand those allegorical verses. Thus, the correct place to put the period in verse 3:7 is the first one: “none knows the true interpretation except God and those well founded in knowledge”.
* [Footnote on verse 29:43: It takes a knowledgeable person to know that the Black Widow spider kills her mate. The use of the feminine reference to the spider in 29:41 is thus significant. This is in addition to the fact that the spider web is physically very flimsy.]—- in other words, the spider supports this home and mates, and in the end it gets eaten alive by the female– those who take up other lords beside God are also headed towards their destruction; their worship of idols will destroy their souls and their idols will abandon them (see verses 6:24, 6:94, 7:37, 28:75, 46:28) and their idols will disown them (see verses 11:21, 16:86, 16:87, 19:82, 29:25, 30:13, 35:14, 41:48), and their idols will even be their enemies/opponents (see 19:81-82), similar to what the female spider does to the male once she is mated.
Indeed, if there were verses whose true meaning were unascertainable by humans, then there would be no point for God to give them to us as a reminder.
Disclaimer: These blogs are not meant to be authoritative for Submission, but instead, informal documentation of my evolving thoughts. I do not claim ‘truth’ to anything I say or write, even if I currently feel like it is likely true based on my current reasoning and knowledge–anything and everything I say is subject to revision or complete abandonment of the theories/concepts/thoughts discussed in any of these blogs. See the about this blog section. Join our discord server, where you can chat with us or ask any questions (there is frequent activity in the voice channels):Https://Discord.gg/Submission
The purpose of this blog is only to document transcripts of YouTube videos discussing this topic. There will be little commentary from me here, God willing. These transcripts were generated by AI and are not perfect–I’m simply using this blog for documentation, search, brief commentary, and future reference purposes.
My overall commentary: This all makes sense, it seems God was priming pre-Islamic Arabia with monotheism and developing its Arabic language to prepare them for the coming of the Quran. God is doing everything, indeed. Additionally, the traditional Islamic scholarship is wrong again and fabricated quite a bit of lies about what Arabia was like just before the advent of Islam. Rather than “Jahiliyya” polytheists, the pre-Islamic Arabs were overwhelmingly monotheists. This is in line with what the messenger of the covenant, Rashad Khalifa, had clarified: contrary to the modern Islamic corrupt traditions (that as we will see below are called “story land” by western scholars), pre-Islamic Arabs were monotheists and believed in one God (Allah) but many were committing acts of shirk (similar to modern day Sunni Muslims) involving reverence for lesser beings, and treating them as intercessors. Indeed, the Quran has been saying this all along. We see in the Quran verses that indicate the mushriks (idol worshipers) did acknowledge one God, but some also described having intercessors. And now we find archeological and epigraphical evidence that this was indeed the case. It remains Impressive how the messenger came to clarify these points, contrary to the satanic Islamic scholarship, and these points are being corroborated by archeological studies past his time. And this of course demonstrates that modern Muslims are almost identical to the pagan idol worshipers prior to Islam–The pagan pre-Islamic Arabs are basically the same type of Mushriks as modern Sunni Muslims.
How is it that Rashad is being found to be correct well past his time by western scholars? How did this one man get all this correct?
(Also see my additional commentary at the bottom of this blog).
Clip 1: The classical Islamic scholarship’s conception of pre-Islamic Arabia is a bunch of ‘story land’
The Jahiliyya and pre-Islamic Arabia are two different places. You can study the Jahiliyya you can read Islamic period sources like… you can read these kinds of guys who are talking about pre-Islamic Arabia they’re talking about the Jahiliya. There are obviously elements of reality in there, but in general that’s Story Land. That’s very different place than the pre-Islamic Arabia that you excavate and that you document on rocks and rock faces and things. That pre-Islamic Arabia is a very different place and there can be two disciplines, one that studies the literary pre-Islamic Arabia (the Jahiliyya) and one that engages with the documentary and archaeological evidence.
Clip 2: Was Arabia Pagan at the Time of Muhammad? Pre-Islamic Arabian Monotheism w Dr Ahmad Al Jallad.
We’ll try to sketch a timeline of Arabia’s religions based on the epigraphic evidence. So we know in ancient South Arabia before the 4th Century, you had a kind of traditional Arabian religion with many different gods in polytheism and then in the fourth Century you have a shift towards monotheism yes veneration of one God who’s called Rahman the merciful– so you have the shift in the fourth Century in South Arabia towards monotheism there’s a debate on the identity of these monotheists are they Jewish are they Judaizing monotheist that’s something that we don’t need to go into now though, but it’s clear that they are monotheist. The other gods disappear from official public inscriptions, and you only have the veneration of one God. Now if we look at the epigraphic record throughout the Arabian Peninsula we see a similar Trend– so in inscriptions before the fourth Century CE throughout the hijaj actually throughout all of Arabia you have invocations to many gods so you can see the Nabatinne inscription
There’s nabattine inscription that opens and invokes Ushara, and then it goes on to invoke Alat< Manat,– so you have all of the gods that are familiar from the Arabic Islamic tradition being mentioned in one inscription, and you could kind of characterize the primary God for the Nabatteans, their National God was Ushara- their main deity, but they had no problem calling upon the other gods in their inscriptions as well.
Now what happens is as we look at the naan and the Nabatean Arabic inscriptions from the hijaz mostly focusing on inscriptions from the northern hijaz because that’s where most of the surveying has taken place and we see a a sort of narrowing of the Gods so by the fourth and early fifth century you get three Primary deities that are mentioned and they’re not mentioned frequently they mainly occur in personal names which is difficult to assess
but the three gods are Al-Uzzah, Manat, and Alat. So these these are the ones we know from the Quran something else happen as you continue to move forward in time when you get to the end of the fifth century and the sixth century and by this time the Nabatinean Arabic script has fully evolved has fully evolved into the Arabic script and once you reach this period all the gods disappear and all you have is Devotion to one God which is and the time she wrote this article was Al-ilah!
Since this article was written, dozens of new paleo Arabic inscriptions have been discovered from the hijaz and what they continue to record around let’s say the area of tab between tabuk and Medina is the Devotion to one God but no longer spelled “Al-ilah” but spelled “Allah”. Now the question was what about the southern part of the hijaz what about the area around Mecca was this area a pagan reservation — there were no surveys nobody had explored the area so we simply had no inscriptions on this– so our fieldwork led to the discovery of more inscriptions now from the mecca area and these inscriptions only record Devotion to Allah. So, it continues this kind of monotheistic Trend.
So if we were to build an image based on the material evidence, the epigraphic record, we would say that the change that happened in South Arabia fourth century shift to monotheism seemed to actually be a peninsula wide phenomenon where you have this slow shift to monotheism in the hijaj as well from the where you have a transition period between the fourth and fifth centuries and then once you get to the end of the fifth and the sixth Century all you get in the inscriptions are are are records or invocations to Allah. Well that’s that’s a shocking result and what we need to do then is take that result and sort of bring it into conversation with what the Quran is attesting, because Quran speaks about opponents of the Prophet who acknowledge Allah but then in certain occasions or for certain reasons return to their gods or demons as their caricatured sometimes and we can’t we can’t use these sort of cheap explanations by saying oh pagans just didn’t know how to write only monotheists knew how to write because we see from the inscriptional record that pagans did know how to write yes they were producing they were mentioning all the gods and they they stopped doing that and we need to explain that that kind of change one you know I don’t have an answer I don’t think we have we have materials at this point to have an answer yet to to reconcile these two sources but one can imagine that and this would be following Patricia crona’s argumentation that these deity that these deities Alat, Manat, uzzah that these deities Were Somehow once monotheism had spread across the peninsula they were reimagined as Angels or some kind of subordinate beings and there was really devotion only to one God and that these being could be seen as intercessors that you could somehow make invocations to them um but ultimately you’re worshiping only Allah.
And of course the Quran says if you ask the pagans who created the heavens and the Earth they will say Allah. So that that that much is reflected in the inscriptional record one of the things that we see also in the inscriptional record despite the text being monotheistic only invoking God seeking the Forgiveness they use the root “ghafara”
So it’s the same root that’s used in the Islamic tradition as well seeking the Forgiveness of Allah in pre-Islamic times calling him “rub”, which is a part of this package of Hebrew Aramaic liturgical terms that come into Arabia with the Advent of monarchism — they urge the reader to obey God — all of these concepts are sort of alien to the let’s say polytheistic Arabian religion that we that that’s Apparent from the inscriptions that they produced centuries before that. These seem to be monotheistic Concepts yes, so some kind of religious Revolution seemed to have happened in the Hijaz, in the century in the two centuries preceding the rise of Islam that led to these new religious formulas these new ways of expressing piety and the relationship between you know individuals and their deity–but we can’t know at this moment what exactly it was we only see again it shadow in the inscriptions.
Clip 3: Epigraphy and Religion and Language in pre-Islamic Arabia
Question: That leads us to the later Islamic tradition depicts Arabia on the eve of Islam and especially the hijaz as largely populated by polytheistic idolaters– people who believe in a Pantheon of gods and worship them as Idols Etc: does this depiction match the archaeological and epigraphic evidence that we find that we are finding for pre-Islamic Hijaz.
Answer: That’s Ground Zero that’s a huge debate academic debate on this subject where you have some example like Michael Leker would view the Quranic audience as being not very different from the Safaitic guys: same kind of people basically you know real Arabian pagans. Hawting on the other hand thinks they were all monotheists already– they were all just monotheistic, and then you’ve got middle grounds people will say okay well they are monotheistic influenced, but they have some kind of pagan, for example the ancient goddesses (Alat, AlUzzah, Manat) have been reimagined as Angels– they become Angels–it’s very possible there are many parallels you can point to that. And what’s fascinating about these discussions for me is how the Quranic text can be used to argue for any of these positions; it can be used to support all of these positions and people have done that by simply giving weight to certain verses over others so you kind of you have Alat, Manat, AlUzzah, “oh well you know that’s just one mention and maybe there’s something else”, and then you focus on the fact they only worship Allah–that they recognize Allah, and they say that these are only our intercessors, so there’s that.
Then you can also move to the fact that they’re you know obviously sacrificing animals and which is something that monotheists at this period weren’t doing and clearly worshiping something that or venerating some things that are the names of which are etymologically ancient Arabian goddesses–so whatever were in in the Quran um historically speaking these were goddesses. Pagan goddesses maybe they have been reimagined that’s very complicated argument they’re Pagan godesses
So The Quranic text can be used to argue any of these positions, and then you go to sources like… and you say well that shows that they’re all just pagans. You can of course look at that stuff a little bit more closely doubt its veracity it’s a sort of a dead end it’s hard to make a definitive argument supporting one position, there’s always other ways of viewing it, and it probably will always be that way but and I think it’s very interesting
So there’s a there’s a new approach which is let’s look at what the epigraphy tells us people are doing, let’s look at what the epigraphy is going to tell us. These texts are going to be produced by people in the time period we want to know about and not by people remembering that time period and not, and they’re not polemical in the way that let’s say the Quran is– the Quran is engaging with its enemies–with its opponents so maybe it’s you know it’s not giving us a completely balanced presentation of their views how they would present it themselves–like we’re not going to get that.
So right now we have more than 45 pre-Islamic Arabic script inscriptions dating from the late 5th Century AD to probably the early 7th. All of these texts are, and we use this word very carefully I’m going to use this word to describe the contents of the texts and not to describe the religious acts of the people who inscribe them– all of these texts are based on the contents of those inscriptions: monotheistic. What do we mean by that they are monotheistic, that they only invoke one God. There’s no invocations to Alat, AlUzzah, Manut–there’s no invocations to… whatever you want they’re not there. They only invoke one God which is in Syria Jordan these areas it is “al-ilah”–literally the god. And in the Hizaj, it is Allah (spelled in different way).
Now, surely, “Al-ilah” and “Allah” are surely the same thing. And you can explain this linguistically with the deletion of the ‘i’ vowel. Between “Al-ilah” then you get Allah and you delete the ‘i’ vowel. I have no idea why Allah is pronounced with a dark l no one can answer that question we come up with a million hypothesis we can’t answer it, but it’s very interesting.
So then only one God Appears to the inscriptions that’s interesting, that’s fascinating, and they are invoking that God using religious formulae that continue into the Islamic period. So they tell people to obey that God; they seek that God’s forgiveness. I have an inscription from … where this one God’s being called upon to forgive someone. Others which is to urge one to obey or be Pious towards the god so and all of these formulaic Expressions continue into the Islamic period.
So continuity in religious expression from pre-Islam to Islam–continuity in of course the veneration of one primary deity but these inscriptions are too low resolution. We don’t know their theology– what we do know is that they venerate one God but that’s exactly what the Quran tells us the Mushrikoon were doing– they had one primary God.
So what the inscription suggest is that they’re different than our Safaitic guys, and they’re different from the very ancient pagans because the very ancient pagans were invoking like you know some Safain scriptures you have 10 Gods being called upon– they invoked everybody [but] by this period they’re only invoking one God
So there is a religious change; something has happened we don’t know about their theology so we can say that these inscriptions are monotheistic and that they only invoke one God but did the people invoking these gods– did they believe in lesser beings that could act as intercessors and is that what the Quran is calling “shirk”– well that’s what the Quran is calling shirk– so did they believe in those things? We have no idea no clue– the inscriptions don’t tell us we can’t know– but what we can know is that the vocabulary the deity the religious sentiments everything expressed in these pre-Islamic texts continue into the Islamic period
There’s one big innovation that happens one big innovation this is very important the Bismillah “Bismillah Al Rahman Al Raheem” is not attested in the pre-Islamic Arabic script scriptures– they use “Bismika Rabanna”, “Bismika Allahuma”. And it’s in the Islamic period inscriptions that we get the Basmallah. That’s a difference and that’s a difference that’s attested in Islamic period sources when the prophet was drawing up a treaty with the Quraish. He wanted to put “Bismillah Al Rahman Al Raheem” and the Quraish said “no we don’t do that, we do ‘Bismika Allahuma'”.
And that’s what we get in the pre-islamic inscriptions, it’s nice when these things kind of fit together. It’s beautiful, amazing.
So what I would say is that the epigraphic results support our need to complicate the image of the Mushrikeen; they are not Safaitic pagans, they are a little bit more complicated they are in some sense monotheists but certainly they were doing things like Association and worshiping lesser beings that was causing them to be called Mushrikoon
Now, here’s a fun question– I was doing this in class the other day and I got a very nice response that illustrated my point well– “would the Mushrikeen have considered themselves monotheists; would they have considered themselves ‘no, but we are only worshiping one God and these other things that you’re calling worship these are just intercessors we’re just asking for their shafaa– for their help to reach this one God, but we believe there’s only one powerful God that created everything’ —in their minds they may have they may have viewed themselves as monotheists in some sense, and I said to the class I said well you know in many parts of the Muslim world, you can visit the shrine of a saint–a Muslim Saint and you can ask for shafaa, you can ask for intercession to intercede between you and God and to help you get good things and go to heaven”– and the kid in the class said “THAT’s SHIRK” and I said “PRECISELY”.
I’m not taking a position on what it is I’m saying that’s the attitude for them the people doing this they consider themselves Pious Muslims if you ask them are you a Mushrik, they would say “no way we’re only worshiping one God, we’re not worshiping these Saints we’re asking them for Shafaa”, but from the point of view of a let’s say if you have a different theological orientation and you’re a very strict monotheist that’s Shirk, that’s Mushrikeen,
So applying that idea to our pre-Islamic context we could very much imagine a situation where the prophet’s message is one of a puritanical monotheistic message– no other beings are doing Shafaa, none of this nonsense, you know there’s only one God and you communicate directly with him unless he allows you to have Shafaa– he can give you that permission but anyway and the other guys are saying no we still have these other magical beings and these angels, if you follow these let’s say supernatural beings, but they were created by God they’re subordinate to him. There’s still one God, and they just simply help us get to Him but we’re really just worshiping one God from the point of view if you’re following this new puritanical monotheistic religion– there’s only one thing to call that and it’s shirk
Question: it’s amazing how Islam didn’t totally rid this idea of delegating some kind of spiritual or Divine agency to lesser gods you kind of see this practice we talked about it the other day within the context of Muhammad ibn abd wahab but you see certain practices like this exist in Arabia all the way up into the 19th century, where they would use certain, they would use intercessors as agents for God but they didn’t see themselves as any less Muslim or monotheistic.
Answer: So yeah you can go back into the ancient period and if these people produced inscriptions if these people who are let’s say visiting the shrines of saints and seeking intercessors when they produce inscriptions, those inscriptions are going to use formula and they’re mostly likely going to read “O God please forgive that person”.
They’re going to only invoke Allah in the inscriptions. So if we looked at their incriptions now they would just be monotheists and we wouldn’t see that complex theology behind it, so I think that’s what we’re getting from our pre-Islamic inscriptions
So it’s wrong I’ve seen some people do this they say Oh look The pre-islamic inscriptions are all monotheists therefore there was no paganism. Well paganism is a difficult term–what does it even mean? you know well you can call anyone a pagan what does paganism mean we don’t know– the inscriptions are monotheist but it doesn’t mean that the people producing them aren’t invoking other kinds of beings which is what the Quran is telling us they’re doing anyway.
Additional Commentary on Clip 3:
Al-Jallad made an interesting point in the above clip that the Quran could be used to argue for all positions: that the pre-Islamic Arabs were monotheists or that they were polytheist, or that they were monotheists with idolatrous tendencies. There is one verse I want to shout out that some have used in our discord server to put heavy weight on and try to demonstrate that all the pre-Islamic Arabs were polytheist:
[Quran 38:5-7] “Did he make the gods into one god? This is really strange.” The leaders announced, “Go and steadfastly persevere in worshiping your gods. This is what is desired. “We never heard of this from the religion of our fathers. This is a lie.
And of course these verses are in contrast to the other Quran verses which state that these Arabs were monotheist (as Al-Jallad rightly pointed out above)–I need not list those verses here since we already know them. But what do we make of verses 38:5-7 above? Let’s stick to the common view that these verses refer to the pagan Arabs of Muhammad’s time:
As Al-Jallad stated in his other works and interviews, Arabia has undergone a shift in the 2 centuries before Islam from polytheism to monotheism overall, however, one is mistaken to interpret this as an “all or nothing statement” as if 100% of the Arabs were monotheistic and 0% maintained the old polytheistic traditions (including but not limited to the nomadic bedouin tribes who might have held high reverence for their ancient family traditions of polytheism and maintained these beliefs moreso than the other Arabs)–so even despite this overall change from polytheism to monotheism on the grand scale, there likely remained small cults among the Arabs who did actually maintain old polytheistic traditions. There seems to have been a gradual progression in pre-Islamic Arabia leading to the majority being monotheist, with some among them even being strong monotheists (as the epigraphic record seems to indicate), some being weak monotheists (ie. believing God has 3 daughters serving as intercessors who carry their prayers to God–this appears to be a majority position in the small group of Arabs in Mecca specifically), and of course, the minority of Arabs being blatant polytheists–and of course Muhammad and the Quran would be interacting and addressing all of them in different verses. The Quran addresses disbelievers of all types, even those who are strong monotheists but who disbelieved in the resurrection or the message of the Quran. That’s why as Al-Jallad stated, the Quran can be used to support the notion that pre-Islamic Arabs are either strong monotheists, weak monotheists, or polytheists: I think it is likely because pre-Islamic Arabia encompassed all three, and the Quran addresses each of them in different places.
Disclaimer: These blogs are not meant to be authoritative for Submission, but instead, informal documentation of my evolving thoughts. I do not claim ‘truth’ to anything I say or write, even if I currently feel like it is likely true based on my current reasoning and knowledge–anything and everything I say is subject to revision or complete abandonment of the theories/concepts/thoughts discussed in any of these blogs. See the about this blog section. Join our discord server, where you can chat with us or ask any questions (there is frequent activity in the voice channels):Https://Discord.gg/Submission
Submission to God 