Allah, Satan, Adam & She. A Qur'anic Creation Play in Five Acts

Though belief in god and the afterlife can be a positive force in forging a healthy sense of self and living a life based on piety, morality, and the pursuit of material success and intellectual achievement, Muslim commentators have, out of pious misunderstanding of the foundational narratives of the Qur’an, stressed the majesty of God and extolled the afterlife and the fear of a punishment dispensed by Allah, whose power is absolute, and whose will is inscrutable. In their stress on Allah’s majesty, they also elevated His might over His kindness, giving the Islamic worldview an eschatological overtone that has had a devastating impact on the Islamic culture, undermining the autonomy of the individual, and promoting ignorance, superstition, submissiveness and cultural stagnation. In modern times, this skewed conception of Allah has promoted a “fundamentalist mindset” that is often sectarian, violent, misogynist, hateful of the West and fearful of modern values.

A bottom-up change in how the believers’ conception of Allah is possible only through a fresh reading of the foundational narratives of the Qur’an. This book rediscovers in the Qur’anic story of creation an emancipatory representation of the divine that preserves Allah’s perfection and also affirms human subjectivity and autonomy.

This new reading of the creation story of the Qur’an celebrates Allah, His Majesty, and most of all, His trust in human freedom. It restores to Allah His hilm, the only attribute that embodies true divine perfection: absolute mastery that is founded on lutf (gentleness), rifq (kindness), safhu (forgiveness), ra’fa (leniency), wudd (love), and rahma (compassion).