Worms and Gods

Started Pathology for USMLE.

Read The Phoenix on the Sword by Robert E. Howards and found out that the Conan Cycle is in the same universe as the Cthulhu Mythos which is insane.

Planning on re reading the Bhagavad Gita again.

Was Salam! I try to get up around 5 and pray Fajr after which I grab my coffee and get in an hour of gym. After that I come home, shower and get ready for med school. I have also been struggling with incorporating Islam in my daily life and have been trying to read Quran more regularly. I think it really is an ongoing struggle.

We've all heard how Ahmed ibn Hanbal saved Islam in a sectarian sense but I was thinking about how Caliph Al Mamun was very clearly attempting to reach the culmination of the political developmemt that preceded Islam

The Roman Empire had been attempting very fervently to merge the institures of Empire with Church by merging the Greek Orthodox church into itself and harshly crushing minor differences as political dissent whereas in parallel the Sassanians had developed ideas of Farr i.e. the Monarchy being divine favour of Ahura Mazda (God).

The latter finds its earliest trace in Darius attributing his successes to Ahura Mazda but much earlier than this it finds root in god men led cities being taken over by military strong men who institute priesthood as a subordinate institute

The Roman impulse finds root in early roman caesar cults which had collapsed in the face of christianity

Both of these ideas developed alongside a 700 year war between Persia and Rome. This war led to the development of very early forms of the idea of holy war on the roman side.

Maybe Ibn Hisham was not aware of this but by chosing to begin his redaction of the Sirah with the collapse of Jewish Himyarite Yemen in the face of a Roman sponsored invasion by Aksum (Abyssinia), his attempt at bolstering his own yemeni origins ironically preserved what I believe one of the earliest impulses of crusade when the jewish oppression of christians were responded to with the sword by a unified christian effort.

Shortly after in 623 Heraclius presents his massive campaign against the persians as a holy war aimed at regaining the Holy Cities of Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem. Most importantly, the true cross.

With the Umayyad state (modeled on roman ideology) the state was viewed as a jihad state perpetually expanding the borders of God's Kingdom, however this impulse neglected the church and the throne which led to the Abbasid Revolution

Al Mamun saw all three and attempted to sieze the future. He named a descendant of the Prophet PBUH and Ali r.a. as his heir and made him his own son in law, he patronised the mutazalites which would give him absolute interpretive and legislative authority over the sharia and he pursued an aggressive policy of expansion.

He saw the Caliph not as a caretaker but as an absolute emperor who ruled both church and state. A warrior god king. The Caliph as a superior successor to Shahanshah AND Caesar.

But.

One man refused to comply.

But how did this save (political) Islam? Wouldn't it seem to have crippled the establishment of a robust absolute empire?

The Buyids (or Seljuks or Mongols)

Within a few decades of Mamun, hordes of shiite turks invaded the caliphate and carved it up among themselves. Most importantly the buyid shahs of Iraq patronised the early scholars of twelver shiism and forced the SUNNI Caliph to show allegiance to the shia cause and participate in muharram mournings.

Only the seljuk invasion ended this humiliation. However if Mamun suceeded. And an absolute Caliph clung on to Empire and God and Prophet. The Buyids might very well have been our end. The reason why the invasion isn't even remembered in our cultural memory is because the Abbasids allowed their regional states to slowly gain independence and foster independent local ideas of statehood.

We look back to that era and see Mahmud Ghaznavid charging into Somnath, cutting down hindus and idols - Indian Islamic Statehood was Ghazwa e Hind

Turkey looks back and sees a migration into Iran and Anatolia where they convert to Islam and cross swords with Rome

Egypt and Syria looks back and sees the Fatimid Caliphate and Saladin

Halfway through the convo I realised we had accidentally reconstructed the Judgement Day. It got me thinking how it was Pax Romana that produced a disenfranchised population living unimportant lives in peacetime that would allow Christianity to spread like wildfire.

Similarly an increased focus on the afterlife appears in India with the second urbanisation period and we see the emergence of Upanishads, Buddhism and Jainism.

The Hebrews in Egypt awaited a Deliverer

The Israelites in Canaan awaited a King

The Jews of Judea awaited a Messiah

The Arabs of Yathrib awaited a Prophet

Was thinking about how I have a three strikes rule for (new) people before I distance myself. And even with long term friendships, I have a limit to forgiveness. And I think I speak for most of us when I say that very few would overlook something like adultery (prioritising someone else over us).

Yet God forgives all of us every single day. How most of the people who made up the greatest generation (The Sahabah) spent their youth in idolatry and disbelief yet not only did God forgive them their inequities but actively fought on their behalf and honoured them above all other generations.

Pray 5 times a day

Gym 5 times a week

Warrior Diet

8 hours of sleep

Zn, Mg, Vitamin D supplements

Tamar and Judah (1667) by Aert de Gelder

Most of us have heard of Onan. At the very least those of us familiar with Christianity during puberty are familiar with him. For centuries, he has been cited as evidence that masturbation is a sin and has filled many a teen with immense guilt. Be that as it may, I re read the passage tonight and noticed something that had passed my notice for years prior.

But I am getting ahead of myself. The story starts in the bronze age when a tribal chief, Judah, has a son with a canaanite woman whom he names Er. Er takes Tamar to be a wife. However YHWH, finds his conduct to be evil and kills him. As per the ancient tribal custom of levirate marriage, Tamar was now to be wed to Er's brother Onan. Onan on marrying Tamar, refuses to impregnate her and instead pulls out every single time they sleep together so YHWH kills him too and the story continues.

That is the story of Onan. Or is it?

That is how most of us remember this story. But there is one little line nestled in there that my brain for some reason passed over every single time I have read this passage. That line is ,"But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother." [Gen 38:9]

Onan's sin was not wasting his semen (although that in itself is not enough to deem masturbation permissible, sorry to disappoint!) but his sin was refusing to raise a child that was not his!* Where else have I heard this before?

Anywhere you go online these days you will see bitter lonely religious young men decry step fathers for being "c*cks" and insulting single mothers with much worse expletives. Why? because in their eyes it is not masculine or just to raise the child of another man. Precisely what was bad enough for YHWH to smite Onan. If YHWH is not directly killing you for your own bitter refusal to be a man and to fulfill your societal duty and letting stupid hang ups like this get between you and love and happiness and health, that does not mean He is not damning you to a slow and miserable destruction.

As you continue reading, Tamar takes on the dressing of a prostitute and proceeds to seduce her father in law and by this act she births twins who will, in time, go on to produce King David and his royal house that as per the new testament culminates in Jesus the son of Mary.

Judah and Tamar (1840) by Horace Vernet

What is the lesson to be learnt from this peculiar passage? Maybe past christians and jews who lived in peace time could not understand as well as we stand to do.

We however live in a time almost as sexually free as that of bronze age canaan. We may see reflections of the onlyfans girls, the step fathers, the born again virgins, the bitter redpill bros in these ancient names who produced mighty men and kings from their human and fallible deeds. and Allah knows best. Amen.