Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director
Summary:
In this Friday sermon, Alban Fejza shows that most stories of the messengers in the Quran follow one twelve-word storyline (people bad, messenger warns them, people don’t believe him, people get destroyed) and explains the exceptions.
Video Transcript:
Praise be to God! There is no other god except God. The Quran contains a large number of stories, which vary in time, length, details, and so on, but there is an archetypal storyline which covers those stories. That archetypal story can be told in only twelve words. Here it is: People bad. Messenger warns them. People don’t believe him. People get destroyed. I can tell the stories of so many messengers with this archetypal story. So, let me tell you the story of Noah: People bad. Messenger warns them. People don’t believe him. People get destroyed. Now, let me tell you the story of Hud: People bad. Messenger warns them. People don’t believe him. People get destroyed. Now, let me tell you the story of Salih: People bad. Messenger warns them. People don’t believe. People get destroyed. Now, let me tell you the story of Lot: People bad. Messenger warns them. People don’t believe. People get destroyed. Now let me tell you the story of Shuayb: People bad. Messenger warns them. People don’t believe him. People get destroyed. Now, with later messengers, again the story line only gets less strong, but the idea is the same. People bad. Messenger warns them. People don’t believe him.
People continue as losers. So, instead of destroyed, they just become losers now. So, the story for the later generations and later messengers becomes more toned-down, because they don’t have as much strength to be as evil as the previous ones. So, let me continue with that archetypal story: The story of Elijah: People bad. Messenger warns them. People don’t believe him. People continue as losers. The story of Elisha: People bad. Messenger warns them. People don’t believe him. People continue as losers. The story of Zachariah: People bad. Messenger warns them. People don’t believe him. People continue as losers. Now, in the case of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, that is only half of the story. So, their first part of the story is again the same: People bad. Messenger warns them. People don’t believe. People continue as losers. However, in the case of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, there is a second part of the story, and the second part of the story continues like this: Other people good. Messenger gives them good news. They believe. They eventually dominate. And because of this second part of the story, we got Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
And actually, based on how many religions we have today from all those messengers, we can tell how many of them were believed by the people. Of course, the messengers did not want to create three religions, but the people ended up believing the messengers basically only three times and after them came people who did not believe but who still inherited the knowledge and they created separate religions out of it. So, from about 20 messengers, people believed them only three times, and this shows how bad the people’s condition is. And even during those three times, a group believed after another group disbelieved. So, even these three messengers were rejected by a group, and then accepted by another group. In the case of Moses, he was rejected by Pharaoh and the Egyptians, and later accepted by the Jews. In the case of Jesus, he was rejected by the Jews, and latter accepted by the Greeks and kind of latter Romans. And in the case of Muhammad, he was rejected by the Meccans and later accepted by the Medinans. Now, there are messenger to whom this archetypal story does not apply, but that’s only because of some other reason. For example, in the case of Abraham (sort of), Ismail, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, this story does not apply, because these were prophets who lived alone with their families and domesticated animals, mostly isolated from communities of disbelievers, and as a result, their people basically consisted of their family. So, in the case of Abraham, Ismail, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, the people around them obeyed them because they were their father, and they would have obeyed them even if they did not believe that they were messengers, because obeying the father was the norm during those times. There is another case where messengers are not rejected. It’s the case of David and Solomon. However, they did not reject them because they were kings, and the king would cut their heads off, if they refused to obey them, as all kings did then. Nothing different there. So, in the case of David and Solomon, they obeyed them because they were kings, and not necessarily because they were messengers. In the case of Jonah, the story diverges from the archetypical story just a little bit, because Jonah is the only messenger who initially refuses to do his job. In his case, the story goes like this: People bad. Messenger warns them. People initially believe him, but in the end they don’t believe him. People continue as losers. But for most of the cases where there is not a specific other reason to diverge from the archetypal story, the root archetypal story is the same: People bad.
Messenger warns them. People don’t believe him. People get destroyed. And the question is, why is this story at the root of all stories in the Quran? It’s because the story of all humanity is that. So, these stories are a lesson for the end of the world. And the story of all humanity is basically that. People bad. Messengers warn them. People don’t believe them. People get destroyed when the End of the World comes. The End of story…they wish. They wish it was the end of the story, but it’s only the end of the first part of the story. The sequel is worse for them, and it goes like this: The warned people get resurrected. Messengers say, “We warned them.” God judges them. The warned people go to Hell, forever. And this second destruction is worse than the first destruction because it hurts more and it lasts forever.