of temptation for men!10
Yet, nowhere in the Qur’an does it incriminate the first woman in humanity. The Qur’anic verses couldn’t be clearer: It was the first human couple which was responsible and it has never been a question, according to revelation, of blaming one or the other.
(And We said: ‘O Adam, dwell thou and thy wife in this garden, and eat freely thereof, both of you, whatever you may wish; but do not approach this one tree, lest you become wrongdoers.’) al-Baqarah 2: 35
And it was both of them who succumbed to the temptation of Satan:
(But Satan caused them both to stumble therein, and thus brought about the loss of their erstwhile state. And so We said: ‘Down with you, [and be henceforth] enemies unto one another; and on earth you shall have your abode and your livelihood for a while!’) al-Baqarah 2: 36
Then the Qur’an describes how both of them, regretting their disobedience and dismayed at their fall from grace, implored God in order that He might forgive them.
That error, a symbol of the first act of human disobedience, was absolutely absolved by the Creator. It is one of the core concepts of Islam according to which the rehabilitation of human beings is total and entirely assumed by the Creator. There is no trace of the concept of the infamous original sin, weighing heavily on the whole of humanity, an irreparable error as it is described in the Christian tradition. According to the Islamic understanding, the forbidden tree is a symbol heavy with significance, designed to test this first couple of human beings, Adam and Eve. In the face of their clear-sightedness, their lucidity and their repentance, Allah forgives them …
And from there, a sort of alliance between God and human beings was sealed via the intermediary of humanity’s first couple … No original sin but rather a sort of original pact between God and His creatures.11
That first erring has, therefore, not been written eternally into humanity’s destiny as it has been transmitted in other religious traditions. God Says:
And whatever [wrong] any human being commits rests upon himself alone […] (al-Anʿām 6: 164)
There is no notion of sin in the Christian sense of the term, nor eternal Divine punishment with its concepts of guilt, suffering or redemption.
The story of Adam and Eve, as it was interpreted in the biblical tradition and by extension in other religious traditions, is far removed from that advocated by the Qur’anic text.
In fact, in tracing the creation of these first human beings, the Qur’an depicts what could be referred to as the first communal human experience symbolized by these two first creatures. Firstly, God honoured the human being by referring to him as - ‘khalifa’12 – on Earth or the ‘legatee’ of His knowledge. Then, Adam and Eve were raised to the ranks of ‘learned beings’, among those who ‘know’, in front of whom the angels – perfect beings – prostrated.
The angels prostrated in front of this human creature because God inculcated knowledge in him! Knowledge is at the root of creation … Humans are above angels, despite the perfection of the latter, due to knowledge, reason and intelligence, qualities inherent to human beings.
The prostration of angels in front of human beings is the revelation of humanism in all its splendour as stated by the great Iranian thinker Ali Shariati13
These two beings created by God lived their first human trial in Paradise, when they infringed the Divine recommendation due to their weakness, their imperfection, in other words due to their humanity.
It was the first human experience of freedom ….
The first human uncertainty, the very first doubt, the first lesson in humility also … despite their superiority in relation to the angels who prostrate before their knowledge, they are not infallible.
The Qur’an thus offers us a beautiful depiction of the human experience within the couple. Humanity’s first couple will experience this first test in perfect communion. First man and first woman together, intimately connected, taken up the challenge of life ….
The Qur’an retraces in a harmonious fashion their fears and their joys, then their disobedience and their hopes, without ever distinguishing one from the other, and certainly not by denigrating one in relation to the other. Together they transgress and it is together that they repented. It is also together that they began a new destiny ….
A beautiful example of tribulations, patience, repentance and hope, whereby the return to God is always liberating.
A story of human experience which is both eternal and continuously renewed.
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1. Translation by Muhammed Asad.
2. The term ‘zawj’ is used in the Qur’an to refer to both the masculine (al-Baqarah 2: 230, al-Mujadilah 58: 1) and the feminine (al-Nisā’ 4: 20, al-Baqarah 2: 102)
3. Lamrabet prefers ‘pairs’ here to Asad’s ‘opposites’ for zawj (Editor).
4. Translation by Muhammed Asad.
5. Translation by Muhammed Asad; parenthesis notes by Asma Lamrabet.
6. Hadith reported by Abu Hurayra in Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.
7. Rachid al-Ghannoushi, Al-Mar’a Bayna al-Qur’an wa Waqi’ al-Muslimīn, (London, Maghreb Center for Research and Translations, 2000), 15.
8. Fakhr ar-Rāzī, Tafsīr al-Kabīr, Mafatih al-Ghayb, pp. 11–13.
9. Ibn Kathir says in his Tafsīr that a number of scholars which he refers to draw on ancient monotheistic sources [‘Isra‘iliyaat’] the story of the snake and of Satan, see p. 80.
10. Al-Qurṭubi, Al-Jami’ li-Ahkam al-Qur’an, Vol. I, p.408.
11. Tariq Ramadan, Les musulmans D’Occident et l’avenir de l’Islam, (Paris: Sinbad-Actes Sud, 2003), p. 36.
12. The term khalīfa is often translated as vicegerent or curator
13. Ali Shariati, ‘Man’s creation from the Islamic viewpoint’. See, http://www.shariati.com/english/human.html
WHEN THE QUR’AN SPEAKS OF WOMEN
The Qur’anic text often cites, and at different points in the history of humanity, characters, male or female, with the constant objective of erecting them as living models for those who ‘believe’.
These
