The Day of Alast

 

Surah 7 (Al-Araf/The Heights) 172-173

172. And when thy Lord took from the Children of Adam, from their loins their progeny [‘seed’] and made them bear witness concerning themselves: ‘Am I not your Lord?’, they said: ‘Yea, we bear witness’, lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection: ‘Truly of this we were heedless’,

 

173.Or lest you should say: ‘It is only that our fathers ascribed partners unto God beforehand , and we were their progeny after them . Wilt thou destroy us for that which the flasifiers have done?’

 

{7.172-173} describe God revealing Himself to the spirit of each person prior to their birth, an event known in Islam as the Day of Alast (literally ‘Am I not…?’)

 

Gabriel said Reynolds in The Qur’an and the Bible connects these verses to the Jewish teaching that the covenant made between God and Moses at Mount Sinai (which alluded to in the immediately preceding verses) was binding not only upon those Israelites present, but also upon their descendants. The idea of an inherited, but dishonoured, covenant by the children of Israel is expressed in {7.169}: ‘Then a generation succeeded them who inherited the Book. They grasp the ephemeralities of this lower world and say: It will be forgiven us.’ Did not the covenant of the book commit them to say aught of God save the truth…’ However, {7.172-173} expands this theme in two different ways: by asserting that the commitment to obey God had not merely been inherited from one’s forebears, but was entered into individually prior to one’s birth and by extending this beyond the Jews to all who are ‘born of the loins of the children of Adam’.

 

Although these are the only verses of the Qur’an that directly allude to this pretemporal covenant, the notion that man is born  with an innate knowledge of having already encountered God can be seen in vocabulary that pervades the Qur’an. The Qur’an  calls upon its audience to ‘remember God’ (‘dhikr Allāh’), {2.152}, {4.103}, {7.205}, {13.28}, {29.45}, {33.41-43} and {63.9}, and a quarter of all surahs employ a phrase such as ‘Unto Him is your return’, both of which imply a prior encounter between the soul and God.

 

The practice of the ‘remembrance of God’ is a foundational element of Sufi devotional spirituality, based particularly upon:

 

{13.28}: ’(God) guides to Himself … those whose hearts are at peace in remembrance of Him’, and

 

{29.45}: ‘Prayer prevents against indecency and abomination, but the remembrance of God us surely greater’,

{33.41-43}: ’Remember God with frequent remembrance and glorify Him … that He may bring you out of darkness into light.’ 

 

The belief in the commitments all people are said to have made to God at the Day of Alast is also the reason for Muslims commonly referring to those who adopt Islam as ‘reverts’ rather than ‘converts’. It is a useful, if not entirely logical, concept upon which to build the Islamic doctrine that a person is born with fitrah: a natural innocence that includes a subconscious disposition to recognise the oneness of God. This allows the Qur’an to present itself as a reclamation of a state of natural innocence, discovered by Abraham upon meditating on nature and kept alive as a ‘pure’ monotheism by Arabs. It also, and probably more to the point, permits it to present those who reject its message, and its author’s instructions, as a sin: the result of their having been led astray by al-Shaytan 〈17.〉, the corruption of former generations 〈88.〉, and lies 〈87.〉, nothwithstanding that God must be supposed to have blocked the memory of such a revelation and pledge from our conscious memory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

{7.172-173} describe God revealing Himself to the spirit of each person prior to their birth, an event known in Islam as the Day of Alast (literally ‘Am I not…?’)

 

Gabriel said Reynolds in The Qur’an and the Bible connects these verses to the Jewish teaching that the covenant made between God and Moses at Mount Sinai (which alluded to in the immediately preceding verses) was binding not only upon those Israelites present, but also upon their descendants. This idea of an inherited covenant is expressed in {7.169}: ‘Then a generation succeeded them who inherited the Book. They grasp the ephemeralities of this lower world and say: It will be forgiven us.’ Did not the covenant of the book commit them to say aught of God save the truth…’ However, {7.172} expands upon this in two different ways: by making the commitment to obey God assented to by each soul individually and by relating this not just to a specific community but to all who are ‘born of the loins of the children of Adam’.

 

Although these are the only verses of the Qur’an that directly allude to this pretemporal covenant, the notion that man is born  with an innate knowledge of having already encountered God can be seen in vocabulary that pervades the Qur’an. The Qur’an  calls upon its audience to ‘remember God’ (‘dhikr Allāh’), {2.152}, {4.103}, {7.205}, {13.28}, {29.45}, {33.41-43} and {63.9}, and a quarter of all surahs employ a phrase such as ‘Unto Him is your return’, which implies a prior encounter with God.

 

The practice of the ‘remembrance of God’ is a foundational element of Sufi devotional spirituality, based particularly upon:

 

{13.28}: ’(God) guides to Himself … those whose hearts are at peace in remembrance of Him’, and

 

{29.45}: ‘Prayer prevents against indecency and abomination, but the remembrance of God us surely greater’,

{33.41-43}: ’Remember God with frequent remembrance and glorify Him … that He may bring you out of darkness into light.’ 

 

The belief in the commitments all people are said to have made to God at the Day of Alast is also the reason for Muslims referring to those who adopt Islam as ‘reverts’ rather than ‘converts’. However, it is hard to rationalise the explicit purpose given in {7.173} for the Day of Alast – namely to deny man any excuse for rejecting Islam, on the basis that he had been unaware of what was required of him – given the fact that God prevented any memory of such an encounter having been  conveyed to our conscious memory.