Fear of Holes in the Holy Qur'an: An Anthropological Approach to Security

"Security" which means feeling calm and relieved from fears and threats, is one of the most essential needs of human beings that has received widespread attention from the Holy Qur'an. However, due to historical-discourse distances from the time of revelation of the Holy Qur'an, security is often confined to concepts such as fighting or verses such as Anfal/60, and other important aspects of this issue has been far from the view of Islamic scholars. Therefore, this study, taking an anthropological approach towards security, tries to study fear of holes, one of the main but neglected types of fear in pre-Islamic Arab culture, and illustrates some of the lesser-known teachings of the Holy Qur'an in this regard. In this essay, it was concluded that the fear of holes can be classified into four major categories: fear of hole as a destructive cause, fear of hole as a too narrow place, fear of hole as a place for communication, and ultimately fear of hole as a place for intrusion. This anthropological achievement can shed more light on neglected dimensions of security in the Holy Qur'an, and thus, help Muslim scholars to comprehend some Qur'anic verses more precisely.