There is no end to the ridicule we Muslims in the West are subjected to endure, every time someone gullible breaks down to the desperation of circumstances and carries out an act of extremism, giving his own life in the process. “So how many virgins is he going to get?” “Seventy-Two!” “Isn’t that a little too many?”. “Was he promised virgins or Virginians?” etc. etc. I remember growing up a Muslim, there didn’t seem anything peculiar about the reward of seventy-two virgins for the righteous one, nor anyone ever questioned this number. Where did this come from? Except for a few AHadith, there is no mention of the number of seventy-two in Qur’an. We need to dig deeper and root out the source of this misinformation.
The references to Kawa’ib Atraaba (وَكَوَاعِبَ أَتْرَابا) as mentioned in Surah An-Naba’ have attracted translations that range from sheepish ‘mention not!‘ by most Muslim translators to ‘full-breasted women‘ by mostly non-Mulim translators of the surah. Of the noted translators: Mawdudi, Yousuf Ali, Shakir, Sher Ali, and Rashad Khalifa, all are circumspect of the full translation of the verse and instead, leer away from any explicit mention of the reference to the physical attributes of houris. The non-Muslim translators, like Arberry and Rodwell, for their own motives, do translate this verse in full, connoting a libidinous nature of the Islamic reward system.
No wonder, the critics of Islam accentuate the shallowness of literal meanings of the sacred word, pinging support for their argument from such loud-mouth Ulema’ who, for their own incapacity to seek out intrinsic connotations, yell out the denotative definition of the today’s vernacular of Qur’an. Even a fleeting knowledge of linguistics and etymology should suffice to make skeptic of a professed scholar of religion. Languages evolve, and so do the contexts they are used in. Then, why we Muslims are so adamant on corralling the eternal message of Qur’an and Hadith in the temporal confines of literal definitions. It’s not what’s in Qur’an or in Hadith (for Hadith, I limit myself to what is considered Sahih and continually referenced) that is contentious, what I contend is how we interpret the contexts and the intent of the sacred word. All epic literature is allegorical, all ephemeral is literal. When we limit the word of God to its contemporary meanings, we take away its perpetuity. Literal meaning-making engenders quarrels, divisiveness, and a general discord. Allegorical meaning-making affords permanence, while embracing multiple perspectives of interpretations.
In this context, the vested opponents of Islam have propagated the issue of seventy-two houris or virgins to the point of contemptuous derision among the non-muslim world of East and West, North and South. Yet, there is no authentic repudiation of this grave misconception that has festered the minds of the believers and the non-believers alike. This article invites an open-ended discourse from among the Muslim intelligentia, as to how to interpret Qur’an, so its meanings remain current in every epoch of mankind, and not be dragged into silly tit-for-tat powwows on issues, like that of the seventy-two houris. Taken allegorically, the Ayat 33 of Surah An-Naba’ refers to a prominence of desires, not the swollen breasts of virgins. The desires could be of fame, of good health, of being loved, of accumulating knowledge. One may put any number to such desires, let’s put seventy-two here, and there are your seventy two houris, the ones which were promised. This allegorical interpretation also addresses the largely unresolved issue of ‘what’s in it for women‘ question. Count the seventy-two blessings one would wish for, and every one could aspire for their own houris, untouched by anyone else, just as promised. We have been given the wrong image of a houri all our lives, only because this image appeals the male-dominated theocracy of Islam. No matter how taxing it is to our brains to unlearn many of the things we have always been taught, it’s about time we shift the paradigm of interpretation of Qur’an and Hadith from literal to allegorical, in order to make Islam a truly universal faith that embraces the entire mankind, and not just about the one fifth of mankind.
References:
The Koran Interpreted: A Translation by A. J. Arberry (1996)
The Koran (Bantam Classic) By John Medows Rodwell (2004)
The Meaning Of The Holy Quran by Abdullah Yusuf Ali (2004)
The Holy Koran [Qur’an] by Muhammad Habib Shakir (2009)
Towards Understanding the Qur’an by Sayyid Abul A’l Mawdudi (2007)
The following reference sites were also sourced in for background understanding of the points of views on this topic, and they have the specific citations for some of the references quoted in this article.
http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Versions/078.033.html
http://www.islamawakened.com/Quran/78/33/default.htm
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