EKS Middle East Post 1: No God but God Ch. 1-2 Revisited

I hate to admit it, but i’m pretty behind when it comes to posting on this site, but I’m going to make the most of the unfortunate situation that we all find ourselves in with the global pandemic. We have almost all the time in the world right now, so nothing to it but to do it.

I revisited chapter 1 of No God but God recently in attempts to start to catch up with where the class majority likely is by now. It discussed Mecca, where it was described to be a hustling and bustling city full of pilgrims that traveled to pay homage to various religious deities and the Ka’ba. It was startling to read about how other god’s like Aphrodite, Jesus and various others here were worshiped here, too. Maybe this is a ignorant thing to say, but i never associated the Greek mythology and Christianity as having an especially strong presence in the MENA region, but Aslan was quick to prove me wrong in only a handful of pages. Hundreds of Gods were worshiped in Mecca, even gods in the ‘pre-Islamic Arabia’ had a modicum amount of presence.

The most interesting tidbit that i garnered however from rereading this chapter was revisiting God’s first command to Mohammad on pg 36; ‘neither to read nor recite, but to arise and warn!” The young prophet was reliant on his hallucinations and visions to spread the word about Allah and the heavens in which he ruled from. Although whatever he said could be argued to sound recited, I feel like that what Mohammad had spoken sounded like poetry to me (i couldn’t tell you why; it just feels like it to me, and i don’t really question it).

Its strange really to revisit this right now. If these gods really do exist, i’d like to ask them why allow the Coronavirus to exist and plague the world. If they really love their creations, why punish them? Maybe its beyond the scope of this class to ask such things, but I couldn’t help myself.