A question regarding an incident in Surah al-Qasas
Question:
as-salamu `alaykum Shaykh. I hope your Ramadan is going well.
I wanted to ask you about the incident in Surah al-Qasas when Musa (AS) accidentally killed an Egyptian. After this incident, Moses ran away, but never sought forgiveness from the family of the deceased. So was the Pharaoh right to remind him of the involuntary manslaughter since there had been no legal process?
(Dr Imran Akram, USA)
Answer:
The motivation of Pharaoh has nothing to do with legal process. What he says to Musa (AS) is obviously a taunt, like his reminding him of how much he owed to Pharaoh’s regime for his upbringing. It is also a threat, as if to say: I can order your execution at any time. In sum, it is intended as a demonstration of the power Pharaoh thinks he has over a man who has dared to come before him as a Messenger of Allah. This is another version, adapted to the particular situation, of how those whose inner being rejects belief, cannot see the Messengers as other than ordinary mortals, just like themselves, with a made-up story which they liken to the stories they themselves make up. In political propaganda terms, Pharaoh is trying to diminish Musa in the eyes of the world (especially in the eyes of Musa’s own people). Pharaoh is incapable of grasping that Allah is real and that Musa really is His Messenger. He could, with relatively little loss, allow Musa to leave with the Israelites. But his exaltation of himself in his own eyes and in the eyes of his favoured subjects, altogether blocks him from understanding the limits of his power.
There is little to say beyond that, other than to reflect on the general truth that human beings do not leave this world with everything all tidied up, all debts paid, all sins remembered and repented, and all their negative consequences undone or otherwise accounted for. No-one reaches the next life with a clean slate, except by an extraordinary grace from Allah. To begin with, human beings simply do not have the competence (or the knowledge) to know all the effects and repercussions of their actions, whether good or bad. We often cannot know for sure if what we have done will turn out good or bad. Then, we do not necessarily get the opportunity and means, even if we most sincerely wish it, to go before those we have wronged and seek forgiveness and/or make whatever amends are feasible. It can be too late; too far away in time or place. So, again: no-one leaves this world brandishing a clean slate. Everyone needs to rely on Allah’s promise that He will, if He wills, turn whatever of ill we have done into as much of good as is possible, and for the rest, if He wills, He will annul and forgive. The condition for this to happen is not remorse –– feeling bad, feeling guilty –– the condition is repentance: that is, consciously determining not to do the same wrong again, ever. Plainly, Musa (AS) is not only remorseful, he has truly repented: for, when the very next day, the same Israelite presents him with another opportunity to intervene in a fight on his behalf, he refuses strongly enough for the Israelite to fear that Musa may hit him and kill him. The determination to repent is evidence both that the remorse is real, sincere, and that the promise of forgiveness is being fulfilled. Allah says in the Book that Musa repented and that He, Allah, forgave him.
As for the legal process and the rights of the family of the man killed: (1) legal process of the kind the questioner has in mind was not formally established until after the laws were given to Musa (AS); (2) there was no law or justice in the dominion of Pharaoh; the entire regime had to be destroyed except what was left as signs for future generations of that destruction; (3) any aspiration for law and order in Pharaoh’s dominions , just like its outward monuments (gardens, fountains, palaces, etc.), was inherited by other peoples; and (4) during the unfolding of the narrative, as told in the Qur’an, there is no indication of any opportunity, from the time of Musa’s (AS) return to Egypt until the drowning of the Egyptian army and elites, and the exodus of the Israelites, whereby he might have discovered the identity of the man he killed accidentally, or reached out to and made amends to his family. Since all that is outside the Qur’anic narrative, it is not really possible to formulate a useful question or answer about it.
That said, what is behind the question is important, and deserves a fuller response.
To understand why the Qur’an relates the incident of the accidental killing the way it does, we need to understand it in both its immediate and broader Qur’anic contexts. The immediate context is found between verses 14 and 21 of al-Qasas. It would take a book to go through the broader context in proper detail, which is not practical. But I can offer an overview of the main points, which may be enough to understand the relevance of the broader context to the question asked.
The broader context
(1) The time of the Prophet Yusuf (AS) in Egypt is in the long, pre-Pharaonic past. At that time lawful and unlawful were linked to the innate human sense of right and wrong. The laws and political system were at least intended to maintain order for the good of the people as a whole, to facilitate collective action on behalf of what is right and lawful. In the Yusuf narrative (surah 12) there are a great many instances of both powerful and powerless people showing concern for right and wrong and for legal process. For example: Yusuf insists that his name be cleared of any alleged wrongdoing before he consents to leave prison. And he uses a legal mechanism to detach his brother from the other Israelites, insisting that the king’s law does not allow him to detain anyone else in that brother’s place. Most conspicuously, Yusuf (AS) asks to serve in the administration of the king, even though the king is not a believer (perhaps not even a monotheist; we don’t know). In this ‘most beautiful’ story, what is wrong is put right: the women confess; Yusuf’s innocence is proven; his wisdom is put to best use; the brothers confess and are reconciled; the father’s patience in grief is rewarded, his sight restored; famine is defeated or escaped. No loose ends; the exquisite dream is made real. For the believers in the age of Islam, this story is a ‘most beautiful’ consolation, that all the hardships (families estranged, wealth and homes abandoned, ongoing losses in the strife of battle, enemies gathering force and numbers) will pass in the fullness of Allah’s plans and determinations, and there will be a perfect contentment and peace.
(2) The time of the Prophet Musa (AS) in Egypt is, by contrast, a period of deeply embedded ghaflah, heedlessness (al-Qasas, 15). The enforced laws of the land are detached from the innate human sense of right and wrong. Of course, such understanding is from Allah and can never be erased from the hearts of all people: there are instances when individuals as individuals speak up for the truth and for justice. But the religion, the laws and the political system as a whole are not intended for the good of the people and not oriented to facilitate pursuit of the good. Instead, the laws and political system are intended to project and maintain the power of Pharaoh and the elite around him. Pharaoh thinks, speaks and behaves with the pretensions of some sort of demigod. He believes that, in the office of Pharaoh, he is the author of the order and prosperity of his dominion, even that the fruitfulness of the land and the waters of Egypt are dependent on him and derive from him. The peoples of Egypt are divided by arbitrary decree into sects or castes and do not share common human rights or dignities. In particular the Israelites are subjected to the cruelest population control: Pharaoh orders the slaughter of their male children and lets their female children live (for reasons the Qur’an is too delicate to make explicit). His pursuit of wealth, status and arbitrary privilege is not motivated only by greed for these things, but by his craving for the exultation he feels when exercising the power to deprive others of these things. Wealth, skills, knowledge, organizational power, are wastefully expended in vast monuments without public utility but effective as symbols of the power of the Pharaonic system, and effective in subduing any aspiration to challenge that system.
(3) It is not (in contrast to his wife) from pity that Pharaoh takes up the Israelite infant (the future Prophet Musa, AS), but out of the arrogant conviction that he will be able, through his raising of this infant, to demonstrate the cultural superiority of his own sect or caste, and to make him a willing, prideful servant of that caste. Some people are puzzled as to why, when Musa (AS) returns to Pharaoh’s dominions and makes himself known, Pharaoh does not have him arrested and executed. This puzzlement is due to an underestimation of the sickness that is generated by Pharaonic arrogance. Pharaoh knows he can have Musa killed but his sickness makes that appear too easy a solution. His sickness is manifested as a need to make a show, through a trial of strength, of the superiority of the caste of which he is the symbol and figurehead. He loses this trial in most dramatic fashion. Pharaoh’s sickness of soul leads him to deny the evident reality of his loss. In exasperation he accuses the sorcerers of conspiracy with Musa (AS), then orders them to be tortured and killed, which does not at all impress the sorcerers. Thereafter, through Moses, by leave of Allah, there are a series of spectacular demonstrations that Pharaoh is not the author of the well-being of the land or the sources of its prosperity. Experienced reality should suffice to annul delusions and false beliefs, but Pharaoh repeatedly returns to defiance, aggravating his sickness to the extreme of incurability. He cannot let go his high opinion of himself until the moment when that letting-go is too late for him to escape the consequences of the manifestly obvious, and abundantly demonstrated, falsehood of his self-esteem.
(4) The Qur’anic account of Pharaoh leaves no room for any hope that this man or the social, intellectual and military elite who serve him have any capacity to reform. Allah willed to prove this by sending them a Prophet. The narrative of the calling of Musa to prophethood, the preparation of him for that role, his struggles both with himself and with the moral failings of his people, constitute by far the grandest narrative passages in the Qur’an. That narrative is intended to inform and educate the Companions of Allah’s final Prophet (SAW), so that they may be inspired by Musa’s courageous trust in Allah when facing impossible odds, and so that they (the Muhajirun and the Ansar, collectively) may not fall short in their obedience to Allah and His Messenger, or fall short in adhering to their covenant with Allah in their declaration of the shahadah.
(5) As well as the general meaning of the narrative for the believers in the age of Islam, it has meanings connected to itself, all of which centre on the character of Musa (AS). Our understanding of his character as a man, as Messenger of Allah, as leader of his people, as husband, son-in-law, as competent shepherd, develops through the diverse narrative passages of which he is the focal point. It is impractical to go through all of these passages in detail. In outline:
He is a man who feels deeply and is moved mightily to indignation by the injustice and wrongdoing he witnesses. His boldness in speaking up, and then acting, are impressively heroic (as the women notice at the watering-place). This courage comes not from deluded arrogance but from the quality of his trust in Allah and dependence on Him, his faith that Allah is at his side and will befriend him. How else, given his speech impediment, given his lack of forces and the humbled conditions of his people, could he take on the mission of challenging Pharaoh and his elite. Sometimes strength of feeling all but overwhelms him before he can bring it under check (for example, his anger with the Israelites when they make the golden calf as a thing to worship, and with his brother for not preventing that; and his fit of dread when he witnesses the sorcerers’ fantastical display). Boldness accompanies his faith in Allah when he asks to see Him, forgetting that nothing finite can contain the infinite: when he recovers from seeing the mountain disintegrate from the majesty of Allah, he repents immediately and totally. His strength of human feeling is demonstrated when he cannot see the good that lies beyond present wrong, and (in the wisdom of Allah) is to be realised through the present wrong: three times Musa (AS) challenges the actions of the sage (to whom Allah has shown some part of the near future), before he comes to the understanding that human beings must work for the good and await the hereafter, not knowing if the good will indeed be attained. What we know and understand, what we wish and strive for, even with best of intentions, does not suffice to deliver in present reality what we intend. Only what Allah intends is reality. While Musa (AS) nowhere proclaims the ‘sabran jamilan’ pronounced by Ya‘qub (AS), his endurance throughout his mission, especially through disappointment with the failings of his people, is proof that he embodied it.
The immediate context
Allah says (al-Qasas, 14) He gave Musa, once he had reached maturity, wisdom and knowledge. By the special arrangement that Allah made for that, Musa was never estranged from his family, even though brought up in the Pharaoh’s household. So he knew that he belonged to the Israelites oppressed by Pharaoh. When he saw two men fighting (15), and the Israelite called for help, he joined in the fight and struck the Egyptian a blow that killed him. He straightaway knows that he has done wrong. As for the wisdom accompanying that knowledge: [Musa] said: This is the Shaytan’s way of acting. [Shaytan] is indeed an enemy, a misleader altogether. The indignation that fired him up to deliver such a blow was an attack of indignation on behalf of his oppressed people, not on behalf of a cause properly thought through. Which is precisely how Shaytan acts most effectively: he makes you believe you are on the right side of a dispute by virtue of your identity, even though, if you thought the matter through, you would be unsure which was the right side in the particular dispute. Justice must transcend family or clan loyalty. That Musa is guided by Allah is evident from his profound remorse and his pleading for forgiveness for having wronged himself (16). He understands from the intensity of his remorse that Allah has favoured him with the sense to know he has wronged himself, and he determines never to repeat that wrong. That is, he repents: I will never be a backer of the guilty/criminal (17); and we might add to that: ‘even if he happens to be an Israelite like me’. Then (as noted above), on the very next morning, the same Israelite (18) presents Musa with another opportunity to intervene in a fight on his behalf. Musa said to him: you are plainly a trouble-maker. Now, as the Israelite moves to fight, Musa moves to stop him so that the Israelite says (19): O Musa! Would you kill me as you killed a man yesterday. You mean to be nothing but an oppressor in the land, you do not mean to be one of the reformers. Basically, the Israelite is telling Musa (AS): you are on the side of the Egyptians, not on our (Israelite) side. At this moment a man comes running to warn Musa to flee (20). The man is not identified except that we know he is from the periphery, the outer part of the city, not the centre of power; so, perhaps a non-elite Egyptian. But we do not know this. And the incident ends (21): So [Musa] escaped from there, anxious, vigilant. He said: My Lord! Deliver me from the wrongdoing people. By means of this incident Allah has arranged the hijrah of Musa, and though he is not yet called to prophethood, he has been guided out of morally ignorant asabiyya, of being on the side of one’s people right or wrong. True human solidarity cannot be built around wrongdoing. As all the narratives of the Prophets (AS) teach us, family- and place-loyalty –– however deep the emotional attachment and however painful to sever oneself from it –– cannot be preferred to the commands and guidance of Allah. What is certain for each us, that all attachments whatsoever, become meaningless and inexistent when we stand before the judgement of our Creator, is made to happen in the earthly lifetime of the Prophets, so that the naked solitude of the Last Day is present to them here and now, and it is this that gives weight to their words and can open the door to faith for those who hear them.
The question that was asked –– why is Musa’s accidental killing of a man not legally dealt with, not (so to speak) ‘tidied up’ –– cannot be answered except by understanding that human beings do not leave this earthly life in some sort of perfected balance, with rights and wrongs all evened out. Some of the Prophets (like Musa, AS) are given assurance in this life of forgiveness; the rest of us are not. All of the Prophets, according to the Qur’anic narratives, made mistakes of some sort, though of Ibrahim (AS) it is said only that he was too tender in his concern over his father’s idolatry. We must follow the example of the Prophets: hope and fear and pray continually that our slate may be wiped clean by the forgiveness Allah has promised to those who believe in Him, the Last day, and strive to do good works. We are commanded to petition Allah in the certainty that His promises are reality: He has promised that nothing great or small is omitted from our record, and also that no-one will be wronged when sentence is passed.
