Hazrat Lut

 Prophet Lut (Lot), a nephew of Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham), was sent to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, in the vicinity of the Dead Sea. His people were homosexuals, generating all sorts of other unspeakable sins as well. As a result, they were punished and wiped off the face of the earth.

The extensive accounts of Lut and his people are presented in these Qur’anic surahs (chapters): al-A’raf (80-84), Hud (74-83), al-Hijr (58-77), al-Anbiya’ (74-75), al-Shu’ara’ (160-175), al-Naml (54-58), al-‘Ankabut (28-35), al-Saffat (133-138), al-Qamar (33-40), and al-Tahrim (10). The following are six lessons gleaned therefrom:

Homosexuality as an atrocious evil

Homosexuality is one of the most despicable crimes. Its character is such that it leads to a succession of other equally atrocious crimes. It violates the fitrah (human nature), treats with contempt religious commandments, works against the laws of nature, and establishes itself as an agent of falsehood and misguidance.

Homosexuality is the mother of all immorality. As a bane of existence, it must be confronted head-on. It is a form of existential perversion whose presence cannot be tolerated. Lut’s people were punished with a combination of punishments, so as to teach posterity a lesson. Allah took away their sight, rained down on them showers of stones, turned their houses upside down, and caused them to be swallowed up by the earth.

Consequently, Sodom and Gomorrah became synonymous with the shameful sin of homosexuality, and the annihilation of their people a proverbial manifestation of heavenly vengeance and justice.

The impact was so great that the word “sodom” became the origin of several English words, such as sodomy, sodomize and sodomite, all of which are related to having intercourse with the same gender as a crime against nature. With slight variations, the word entered the vocabularies of many world languages, becoming an international term.

Moreover, in the languages of most countries where Muslims are majority, the root of the word “lut (lwt)” is also used for constructing terms, often pejoratively, concerning homosexuality. Some of such languages are Arabic, Malay, Persian, Bosnian, Urdu, Pashto and Turkish.

Allah calls the people of Lut immoral, unjust, lewd, mischievous, transgressors, criminals, evil-doers, people without reason, destroyed in such a way that their roots were cut off, a people given to evil and committing abominations.

The Prophet cursed three times “the one who does the action of the people of Lut”, which is unprecedented.

Evil knows no bounds 

When Satan rebelled against Allah, he vowed that he will stop at nothing in order to deceive and misguide man. Destroying humanity became the object of his existence. Some of the most applicable strategies of Satan are reinvention, ingenuity, guile and deceit. He aims to hit man where it hurts him most. Falsely decorating and making bad things fair-seeming to people is analogous to Satan’s operational forte.

Satan knows that man’s weakest points (Achilles’ heel) are mortality and thirst for power. These in turn trigger and intensify the processes of pleasure-seeking with the aim of getting the most out of the sole and short life opportunity. The purpose is to awaken the animal side of man and to make it rule over the rest of his being.

Satan promised that he will go so far in deluding and misguiding man that man, in the end, will yet resort to changing the creation of Allah. He will rebel against himself, his Creator and the order of nature. So confident was Satan about his plans that he said to Allah that “You will not find most of them grateful (to You)” (al-A’raf, 17).

Satan’s destruction of man does not manifest itself physically, but spiritually, morally and psychologically. The damage originating therefrom is more substantial, more vicious and more durable.

In addition, Allah as the Creator tests man as His creation with myriads of tests. In passing, this earthly life in its totality is nothing but a test. It is a short-lived affair nonetheless, whereas the Hereafter is the eternal abode.

As part of the procedure, Allah makes some people more inclined to certain sins than others. People vary in their tests and also capacities. The tests of Lut’s people, certainly, were unique, requiring a unique set of responses.

Hence, every person is obliged to study himself to see where his personal strengths and weaknesses lie. He should capitalize on the former and work continuously on protecting and remedying the latter.

There is nothing special for a person to discover that he was created slanting towards a sin as a test from his Creator, only then to surrender to it. Giving in to the impulses of lusts is not a sign of strength or victory. Rather, it is a sign of weakness and defeat.

Indeed, a sign of strength is to resist the advances of vice and immorality, regardless of their types and degrees, and to cultivate the spiritual and moral virtues instead. A sign of strength furthermore is to reject Satan and his wiles, and to willingly submit to Allah and His divine guidance. The victory is to turn to the right direction and the right source for inspiration and support.

The immorality of the people of Lut was the result of all those factors. They succumbed to the deceptions of Satan and the weaknesses of their own souls. They allowed themselves to be thus blinded and incapacitated, and to be hoodwinked into doing something which nobody ever did before them. They became at once the victims and protagonists in pushing the limits of evil to hitherto unknown levels.

That is why Prophet Lut constantly reminded them of that ungodly “honour”. He used to tell them: “Do you commit such immorality as no one has preceded you with from among the worlds?” (al-A’raf, 80).

Lut told his people that the reason for their wickedness was the fact that they neither feared nor obeyed Allah. His commandments meant nothing to them. They preferred to submit to and follow the phoney authority of Satan and their inflated selves. They were a plaything within Satan’s schemes. They permitted their carnal desires to rule over them and to preside over their decision-making.

Allah describes their state as follows: “Indeed they were, in their wild intoxication, wandering blindly” (al-Hijr, 72). How severe their condition was testifies the point that before these words, Allah swears by Prophet Muhammad’s life: “Verily by your life (O Muhammad)”. The two parts constitute one verse and so, one verdict.

Caliph al-Walid b. ‘Abd al-Malik is reported to have said: “If Allah did not inform us in the Qur’an about the crime of the people of Lut, we would never know that such a thing is possible.”

How was that possible?

The reason is that evil is rendered meaningless, hollow, vain and unreal when juxtaposed with the truth and righteousness. It stands no chance in any fair and square confrontation with the latter. Its falseness and futility are brief. What is done by night, appears by day.

Therefore, to have any bearing on life proceedings, evil must project itself as a moving target. It must continuously reinvent itself and its modi operandi. It must be extremely (and devilishly) creative in what it normally does, remaining “ever-fresh”, “ever-attractive” and “ever-relevant”. It needs much more than just survival and being around. It needs to be on the offensive.

The results of the relentless creativity and resourcefulness of evil are meant to keep the truth and its people busy, not allowing them to fully concentrate on the rendering and promotion of their case. The truth and its people are meant to be mired in dealing with the fluid, unpredictable and evolving nemesis. The aim of evil is not to promote itself, for it has nothing genuine to promote. Rather, its aim is to try to contain and stifle the potency of the truth as much as possible.

And since the confrontation between good and evil, and between the truth and falsehood, is a rule of life, evil and falsehood are set to go to great lengths to always reform and keep themselves up to date. They are set to know no bounds in doing so. There is no extremity, limit, aberration and anomaly in the vocabulary of evil. The only thing that is anomalous and undesired is the truth and its ways.