People often wonder whether the great flood engulfed the whole earth or just the area where Noah and his people lived. What were the boundaries of that area in the ancient world or in the new one? We simply have no definite answer for any of these questions. But then the significance of the story is in no way affected by our lack of knowledge on this point. Taken at face value, the Qur’ānic text suggests that the people of Noah constituted all mankind at that particular time. Their land was the only inhabited area of the earth. Secondly, the floods must have swept through this whole area, drowning all living creatures, except those saved in the ark.
This is sufficient for us to understand that great event which undoubtedly happened, since no lesser source than the Qur’ān tells us about it. Our history books, on the other hand, record nothing about that ancient period. The writing of history is a relatively modern art that has recorded only a fraction of the events witnessed by mankind. Besides, whatever is recorded by history is subject to error, falsification and distortion. Hence, we need not seek history’s confirmation for anything which we are certain has happened, since we are told about it by God who revealed the Qur’ān.
The legends of different communities often speak of a flood far back in their history, one caused by the erring ways of their ancestors. The stories related in the Old Testament also mention the flood that overwhelmed Noah’s people. None of this, however, should be discussed in conjunction with the Qur’ānic account of the flood, because that would mix the true and accurate account of the Qur’ān with myths of unknown origin and poor authenticity. However, the fact that such myths exist and are told in different communities suggests that the floods covered the lands of these communities, or that its memory travelled with the offspring of those who were saved.
We should also remember that neither the Old Testament, which includes Jewish Scriptures, nor the New Testament with its Christian Scriptures is the text revealed by God. All copies of the Torah that God revealed to Moses were burnt by the Babylonians when they enslaved the Jews. It was rewritten several centuries later by Ezra — who is probably the one mentioned in Sūrah 9 as Uzayr — about five centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ. He recorded what remained of the original Torah, but the rest is of human authorship. The Gospels, on the other hand, include only what Christ’s disciples and their students could remember one century after Christ’s life on earth had ended. Numerous stories and legends were subsequently added to them. Hence, we cannot rely on these Scriptures to establish certainty on any matter.
This is anyway a side issue. What we need to do is try to understand the moral of this great event. Indeed, the story drives home several lessons which we will now briefly discuss.
As we have seen, Noah’s people were immersed in jāhiliyyah. Hardened in their evil ways, they stubbornly rejected his message based on God’s oneness and the need for all people to submit themselves to Him only. Noah’s people were Adam’s progeny, and we know from Adam’s history related in Sūrahs 7 and 2, The Heights and The Cow, that his fall was the prelude for him and his offspring to be charged with the task of building the earth. This was the purpose behind his creation. God gave him the qualities and abilities necessary to perform this task after He had told him how to repent and seek forgiveness for his error. Adam received certain commandments from his Lord and God forgave him his sin. He then pledged to God, along with his wife and offspring, that they would always follow God’s guidance and never listen to Satan, their eternal enemy.
Adam, then, descended to earth with the right faith: submitting himself to God, following His guidance. He did, no doubt, teach his children the meaning of Islam, i.e. submission to God. Hence, this submission, or Islam in the general sense of the word, was the first faith ever known to man on earth. There was no other faith alongside it. Hence, if Noah’s people, a later generation, were so immersed in the type of ignorance, or jāhiliyyah, described in this sūrah we can state, in all certainty, that such jāhiliyyah, with all that it entailed of paganism, legends, idols, false concepts and traditions, is something more recent than the pure faith of Islam with which human life on earth started. Man’s deviation from the monotheistic faith based on submission to God, i.e. Islam, in its broader sense, took place as a result of Satan’s machinations. As the enemy of both God and man, Satan always exploits people’s weaknesses whenever they become lax in their observance of God’s commandments and deviate from His guidance. God has created man and granted him a measure of free choice, by which he is tested. With this measure he can choose to hold fast to God’s guidance, fortifying himself against his enemy. Or he can deviate from God’s guidance and follow any other way. When he deviates, even slightly, Satan overpowers him, eventually, pushing him to that state of ignorance experienced by Adam’s offspring. Yet Adam was a prophet who taught the faith based on submission to God.
The fact that the first faith ever known on earth was Islam, or submission to God alone, makes it imperative for us to reject as conjecture the theses advanced by the masters of Comparative Religion and other evolutionists. These claim that monotheism is a recent development in human religion, preceded by several stages and forms of polytheism and dualism, worship of natural forces, spirits, planets, etc.
Whatever research is made in this connection follows a particular methodology predetermined by historical, psychological and political factors. This methodology destroys the basis of divine religions, and the very concept of revelation and divine messages, in order to establish that all religions are a human product. Once this is established it can easily be claimed that religions developed as human thought advanced.
Some of those who write in defence of Islam err, unwittingly endorsing the theories of specialists in the history of religion who conduct their research along such predetermined lines. While defending Islam so enthusiastically they unwittingly destroy the basis of the Islamic faith as stated in the Qur’ān with absolute clarity. The Qur’ān states that Adam (peace be upon him) descended on earth with the faith of Islam. It also states that Noah (peace be upon him) faced a later generation that had installed ignorance in place of Islam. He advocated basically the same faith based on the absolute oneness of God; i.e. the Islamic faith in its broader sense. The same cycle repeated itself after Noah with mankind abandoning Islam to adopt different jāhiliyyah doctrines. All prophets were sent with the same message of God’s oneness, calling on mankind to submit themselves to God alone. At no point was there any development in the divine faith in as much as it relates to the basics of faith.
Evolution, expansion and advancement addressed only the laws that accompanied the same faith. An enlightened study of the development of jāhiliyyah doctrines does not lead to the conclusion that people progressed to monotheism. It rather shows that the monotheistic faith, preached by successive prophets and messengers, left more traces in succeeding generations, even after they had deviated from true faith, to make their doctrines nearer to the monotheistic origins. Belief in God’s oneness dates back much further than all pagan religions. This faith was complete right from the start, because it was not the result of human thinking or increased human knowledge. It was given to man by God, and as such it was true and complete from the outset.
This is clearly established in the Qur’ān. It is not for any Muslim scholar either to depart from what is stated so clearly in the Qur’ān or to follow professors of Comparative Religion as they grope for a coherent theory.
Devoting a chapter to the origins of faith in his book, Allah, or God, `Abbās Maĥmood al-`Aqqād, writes:
Human beliefs developed in parallel to human development in scientific knowledge and other skills. Thus, early beliefs fit with the standards of early human life, as did human scientific knowledge and skills. This means that such early knowledge in the scientific field was no more advanced than early beliefs and worship. Neither field reflects a clearer grasp of the truth.
Moreover, human efforts to formulate a true concept of religion must have been harder and longer lasting than those related to science and industry. The greatest truth in the universe must be harder to achieve than the truth of different areas addressed at times by science and at others by industry.
People remained ignorant of how the sun functions, although it is the clearest thing our eyes see and our bodies feel. For a long time, the common belief was that it was the sun that orbited the earth. They explained its movement and other aspects in much the same way as they sought to explain mysteries and interpret dreams. People’s ignorance of the nature of the sun, which may be true even today, never prompted anyone to deny its existence.
This means that our reference to the origins of religion in the early periods of jāhiliyyah does not indicate that religiosity was false, or that it meant a search for the impossible. All that it shows is that the greatest truth is too momentous to be comprehended in full in one generation. People must gather it in stages, one generation after another, in the same way as they do with smaller truths of which their senses are more cognizant. However, the greatest truth requires them to put more toil and effort into the process.
Studies in Comparative Religion have unravelled a multitude of myths and superstitions in which early humanity believed. Traces of these continue to be found among primitive communities or nations of ancient civilization. It was never presumed that such studies could make any different discoveries, or that early beliefs could be anything other than such myths. Indeed, this is the logical conclusion which scholars expected. They did not expect to unearth anything that could be the basis of a completely new outlook on the essence of belief. A scholar who imagines that his research in primitive faiths could lead him to conclude that the early humans recognized the fundamental universal truth, complete and pure, is only pursuing a mirage.20
In another chapter, on the ‘Stages of Belief in God’, al-`Aqqād writes:
Scholars of Comparative Religion identify three main stages of belief in primitive communities: polytheism, henotheism and monotheism.
In the polytheistic era, early tribes worshipped scores or even hundreds of deities. In this era, it was often the case that a large family would have its own deity which members of the family worshipped. Alternatively, they may have a charm or a symbol which deputized for the deity in accepting prayers and offerings.
In the second stage, deities continued to be worshipped in their hundreds.
However, one of them begins to acquire greater prominence, either because it is the deity of the largest tribe commanding the allegiance of other tribes, or because it commanded higher authority, such as the god of rain in a land that depends on rain for irrigation, or the deity commanding wind in an area often hit by hurricanes.
The third stage witnesses the rise of nations. Each nation congregates around the same worship although different deities dominate different provinces. It could happen in this stage that one nation imposes its own religious worship on another, in the same way as it imposes its political authority. It may also accept that the deity of the defeated nation should submit to the higher authority of the deity of the victor nation, yet the former continued to be worshipped by its defeated adherents.
A nation attains this stage of deficient monotheism only after going through different stages of expanding human knowledge that makes old legends and superstitions no longer acceptable. Thus, God is described in terms that are closer to perfection and holiness than were given to old deities worshipped during the polytheistic stage. Worship becomes associated with contemplation and reflection, and with God’s will and superior wisdom. The main deity is often thought of as the only true Lord, while other deities are reduced to a rank similar to that of angels or gods that incurred the displeasure of the superior deity.21
It is clear from al-`Aqqād’s views and what he attributes to other authorities in Comparative Religion that the origin of religious belief lies with human beings. Thus, it reflects their rational, scientific, political and civilizational development. Progress followed its consistent line, starting with polytheism, then moving to dualism and finishing with monotheism. Indeed this is clear in the first sentence the author writes in his Introduction: “This book discusses the rise of the belief in God, from the time man worshipped a deity until he recognized the One God and purified his belief in God’s oneness.” Without a doubt, God states in His glorious book, the Qur’ān, most clearly and decisively, something that is at variance with what al-`Aqqād has written, influenced as he is by scholars of Comparative Religion. What God clearly states is that Adam, the first man on earth, was fully aware of the truth of God’s oneness. He knew it to be pure, unmixed with any trace of polytheism or dualism, and he knew the meaning of submission to God alone and its practical manifestation in following only God’s legislation. He also communicated this faith to his children, leading to the existence of several generations in the earliest period of human history who knew no belief other than God’s oneness and no faith other than submission to God, or Islam. As time went by, and generations of Adam’s progeny succeeded one another, deviation crept in, perhaps towards dualism and perhaps towards polytheism. Nonetheless people began to submit to a multitude of false deities. Then the Prophet Noah brought back the divine faith of monotheism. The flood drowned all those who persisted with their erroneous beliefs. Only those who believed in God’s oneness were saved. They were the ones who rejected all forms of polytheism and the association of partners with God. We may say without fear of contradiction that several generations after Noah continued to live under the divine faith, Islam, based on pure monotheism. But then again, with the passage of time, deviation crept in and people started to move away from the true faith. This was the case with every one of God’s messengers: “Before your time We never sent a messenger without having revealed to him that there is no deity other than Me. Therefore, you shall worship Me alone.” (21: 25)
This is certainly at variance with what specialists in Comparative Religion and al- `Aqqād conclude. The two approaches are diametrically opposed in methodology and conclusion. We should remember that the views of academics and writers are theories that may contradict one another, which means that none provides a final and confirmed judgement, even by human standards.
Needless to say, when God unequivocally states something that is contradicted by others, the statement to follow is God’s. This applies particularly to those who write in defence of Islam, aiming to clarify misconceptions about Islam and the origin of faith. For there is no service to Islam by undermining the fact that it came to us in the form of revelations bestowed by God. No human being has invented it. It preached the basic truth of God’s oneness from the very first day, and never entertained any idea or concept that is at variance with the truth of God’s oneness. Nor did it preach any concept other than that of God’s oneness in any of the divine messages.
These brief remarks demonstrate the grave danger we expose ourselves to if we borrow our basic concepts from un-Islamic sources. They also show how deeply Western thought influences people who follow its methodologies, even when they try to defend Islam and refute accusations levelled at it by those who are hostile.
“Surely this Qur’ān shows the way to that which is most upright.” (17: 9)