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Apparent Contradiction In The Story Prophet Lut In Surah Hijr & Hud
I am asking this question on behalf of another brother.
There is an apparent contradiction in order of events between two versions of story of Prophet Lut and his Qawm.
The events are –
Event 1) The messengers arrive
Event 2) They introduce themselves to Prophet Lut, ask him to leave with his family and inform him of the punishment to his Qawm
Event 3) The people of the town rush to Prophet Lut to ask him to give the men over
In Surah Hijr(relevant verses 15:61 – 15:67), Event 2 happens before Event 3. However in Surah Hud, (relevant verses 11:77 to 11:81), Event 3 happens before Event 2.
Can some please explain this contradiction?
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8 Replies
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Apparent Contradiction In The Story Prophet Lut In Surah Hijr & Hud
updated 2 years, 3 months ago
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8
Replies
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This is a usual style of the Quran to tell different parts of a story in different orders, depending upon different requisites of the particular style of narration in one place. It is not necessary that two events narrated consecutively always come one after another. The word و does not necessitate the order of the events. To indicate the same, in Al Bayan a parenthetical annotation is given at the beginning of verse 15: 67, read the following translation by Ghamidi saheb:
[It happened before this that seeing boys coming over to the house of Lot,] the people of the city arrived with joy.
Lot said: “These are my guests; so, do not humiliate me;
fear God and do not disgrace me.”
They said: “Had we not stopped you from all the people from outside [that you should not become a hindrance between them and us?”]
Lot [helplessly] said: “If you have to do something, then here are my daughters.”
By your life [O Lot! At this time,] they are being blind because of their frenzy.
[We assured Lot.] Then at the strike of daybreak, Our shout [87] overtook them
and We ravaged that settlement and let loose on them a shower of stones made of hard clay.[88]
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Jazakallah for your answer.
This is definitely helpful. Thanks for referencing the Al Bayan annotation. It does clarify the actual order of events, i.e. that the townspeople rushed to Prophet Lot before the angels revealed their identity.
I have three questions on this for my understanding –a) If we didn’t have the other version of this story in Surah Hud, what’s the possibility of interpreting the story in this way, i.e. not assuming the flow of events to be chronological, or not take the و to signal order of events. I am asking this to know if there is anything else in the language of the verses or the way it is presented that suggests this interpretation, or if this is being done only to reconcile with the information from the other verse. Or to put it differently, if someone with good knowledge of classical Arabic was reading just this verse, how likely are they to conclude or consider the possibility of this being the order of events?
b) Could you refer to (or point me to) other examples in the Quran, particularly when it’s telling a story where a non-chronological style has been adopted in the narration? In general, I understand that things like flashbacks, etc are common in many forms of literature, but an out-of-order telling of a short episode that takes place over a day seems unconventional.
c) What could be the value of adopting such a style, in particular in this context?
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@Irfan76 Could you please look at my comment and answer when you’ve got time? JazakAllah
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I really don’t understand this behaviour from Taimur Mughal. I posted this question a couple days back here Discussion 76715.
First, you hijack that discussion by posting conjectural answers without any real knowledge of the subject. You can spam the entire site with speculative opinions if you carry on like this. Under every thread, go and offer your take and drown the thread in useless noise and make it harder to get to the actual answer. One should only answer if they have some knowledge of the subject. Otherwise, they should sit back and try to learn from others.
Secondly, when I ask you to stop doing that, you copy the question and start another thread instead of allowing people to answer my question on the thread I started.
That thread is already ruined. I’ll continue my discussion on this thread. Please don’t repeat this behaviour again.
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Brother I apologised to you personally in your message box and I told you I will ask this question for you because I had answered it and it got unnoticed.
What you are now doing is spreading hate. We are here all to learn. Fear God and Do not cause corruption among your brothers here.
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I didn’t see the message in the inbox. I would have preferred to wait for the moderators’ response on my original thread or to repost it myself if I thought this was being ignored. Anyway, thanks for reaching out on direct message. I apologise for being rude in the earlier comment.
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If responded by others, the thread is marked as answered, therefore does not appear in the unanswered list when we check and it goes sometimes unnoticed. It is, therefore, better, to wait for a moderator to respond first.
Peace.
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For a question to answer, it is better to let the moderators respond first. Then you can put in your opinion or question for further details.
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