Lut: Difference between revisions

The story of Lut is told in many different places in the Qur'an, which can be read [[Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Homosexuality|here]]. According to the Qur'an, Lut was a righteous prophet who was sent to preach the word of Allah to the sinful people of Sodom and Gomorrah. They repeatedly rejected his message and threatened him, until angels from Allah turned up at Lut's house. They bring him tidings of the destruction of the twin cities. The wicked people of Lut's cities then also show up at his house, demanding to rape the angels they believe are foreigners. Lut offers them his daughters in lawful Islamic marriage to them instead (which the mufassirun read as being the daughters of his nation, id est the females of the cities) but they refuse. In their drunkenness and blindness Lut is able to escape, and Allah destroys the cities with brimstone. The outline of the story is in some ways similar to the biblical original, but the story has some salient points which mark its importance in Islamic theology and separate it from its biblical progenitor:  

Lut's wife is accused by the Qur'an of complicity in the sin of his people. In the tafsir of ibn Kathir it is written:  

 

 

 

The Most High (Allah) tells of his servant Lut, peace be upon him, who warned his people of Allah's coming wrath upon them for their disgusting actions that had never been done before by on of the sons of Adam (id est by any human before), and that was the practice by men of sexual relations (with each other) without women, and this is greatly disgusting, the men were satisfied with men, and the women with women}}

 

Thus it can be assumed that she like the rest of the women of her people was engaged in homosexual behavior with women on a regular basis, thus justifying her destruction. This shows how parts of the story were not conveyed in the Islamic tradition; in the biblical original, Genesis 19:17 and 19:26, Lot's wife is destroyed because she looks back at the city being destroyed in contravention of the Angels' orders.

The detail of Lut offering up his two daughters to the crowd of rapists ({{Quran-range|15|67|71}} and {{Quran-range|11|77|79}}) is a detail from the original story (the Bible, Genesis 19:8) which has survived the Islamification of the text and story. In the original story, the angels sent by YHVH to Lot's houses are Lot's guests, and Lot as a good Middle Eastern host is required to offer them good hospitality and protection, while the wicked men of Sodom and Gomorrah accost their house demanding to rape them, which is not a very hospitable thing to do. Although to later readers and listeners the salient point of the story appeared to be the lust of the men of Sodom and Gomorrah to rape other men, in fact a close reading of the original text of Genesis appears to cast their prime sin as inhospitality to guests and foreigners: Lot offers his daughters because he is a righteous man who takes care of foreign visitors as a good guest should, even at the cost of his own daughters' precious virginity. His willingness to sacrifice his daughters to the rapist mob is proof of his good hospitality, while the mob's insistence on raping these guests while they had perfectly good virgin daughters available for rape points to their wickedness and total lack of any morals whatsoever. In the Qur'anic version, though, by which time the homosexuality of the people of Lut has evolved into their prime sin, this gesture makes little sense since purely homosexual rapists would theoretically have no interest in his daughters (and the offering up of the daughters to be raped likely appeared as strange to the first generations of Muslims as it does to modern readers). It survival shows its salience in the original story, even if devoid of context here.