Tasting fire: Affective turn in Qur’anic depictions of divine punishment

Several Qur’anic passages suggest humans will experience God’s punishments through their sense of ‘taste.’ While the Qur’an conveys some of the ways that taste functions and relays knowledge in both earthly and paradisiacal realms, it is in the context of punishment that taste delivers the divine message more forcefully and directly than the other senses. The responses sparked by the horror of God’s pressing abhorrent flavors on one’s tongue, and down one’s throat, prompted the most strident disbeliever to cultivate a more righteous and receptive character, so that s/he may ‘taste mercy