SCIENCE IN QUR'AN
The Qur'an was revealed in the seventh century. Many
statements pertaining to physical phenomena are dispersed throughout the Qur'an.
These are there in the Qur'an to draw the attention of people to the wonders of
Allah's creation. Any other seventh century book making statements about the
physical universe would surely contain mistakes. Our knowledge of physical
sciences in the twentieth century is far advanced beyond the imagination of
people living in the seventh century. What will come as a surprise to many
people is that of all the numerous statements about scientific matters found in
the Qur'an, not one of those have proved contrary to the established facts of
science. On the other hand, many of those statements have already been verified
by modern scientific studies, and we confidently expect that as various fields
of knowledge advance, other Quranic statements will likewise prove true.
Let us look at some of the statements which science has
already verified.
ORGANIZATION OF THE UNIVERSE
What the Quran mentions about the organization of the
Universe is important because "these references constitute a new fact of divine
Revelation" (The Bible, the Quran and Science, p. 153). The Quran deals with
this matter in depth although this is not dealt with in the previous scriptures.
Dr. Maurice Bucaille also points out the important fact
that the Quran does not contain "the theories prevalent at the time of the
Revelation that deal with the organization of the celestial world" (p. 153). If
the Quran was authored by any human being, he or she would have naturally
included the ideas prevalent at the time. But many of those ideas were later
shown to be inaccurate. How did the author of the Quran know enough to exclude
those ideas, unless the author is God himself.
Those who say that Muhammad authored the Quran think that
the Arabs were very knowledgeable in the field of Science, and Muhammad was or
course one of them. But this explanation is based on the incorrect assumption
that the Arabs knew Science before the Quran was revealed. As pointed out by Dr.
Bucaille, the fact is that Science in Islamic countries came after the Quran,
not before. "In any case", writes Dr. Bucaille, "the scientific knowledge of
that great period would not have been sufficient for a human being to write some
of the verses to be found in the Quran" (The Bible, the Quran and Science, p. 1
53-1 54)
Modern astronomers are aware that the stars and planets
are kept within ranges of precise distances from each other. Had it not been for
this fact, collision between them would be inevitable. The author of the Quran
was also aware of this. In the Quran we read "the sun and the moon (are
subjected) to calculations (Quran 55:5).
Again, we read: "For you (God) subjected the sun and
the moon, both diligently pursuing their courses" (Quran 14:33). The phrase
'diligently pursuing their courses' is a translation of the Arabic term daa'ib
which here means 'to apply oneself to something with care in a perseverant,
invariable manner, in accordance with set habits' (The Bible, the Quran and
Science, p.l55). And that indeed is how the sun and moon behave.
Another verse in the Quran says, "the stars are in
subjection to His command" (Quran 16:12). Order in the universe is essential for
its preservation. God, who subjected them to that order knew about it before any
scientist.
THE SEQUENCE OF DAY AND NIGHT.
At a time when it was held that the Earth was the
centre of the world and that the Sun moved in relation to it, how could any one
have failed to refer to the Sun's movement when talking of the sequence of night
and day? This is not however referred to in the Qur'an and the subject is dealt
with as follows:
sura 7, verse 54: "(God) covers the day with the night
which is in haste to follow it..."
sura 36, verse 37: "And a sign for them (human
beings) is the night. We strip it of the day and they are in darkness."
sura 31, verse 29: "Hast thou not seen how God merges
the night into the day and merges the day into the night." sura 39, verse 5:
"...He coils the night upon the day and He coils the day upon the night."
The first verse cited requires no comment. The second
simply provides an image. It is mainly the third and fourth verses quoted above
that provide interesting material on the process of interpenetration and
especially of winding the night upon the day and the day upon the night. (sura
39, verse 5) 'To coil' or 'to wind' seems, as in the French translation by R.
Blachere, to be the best way of translating the Arabic verb kawwara. The
original meaning of the verb is to 'coil' a turban around the head; the notion
of coiling is preserved in all the other senses of the word. What actually
happens however in space? American astronauts have seen and photographed what
happens from their spaceships, especially at a great distance from Earth, e.g.
from the Moon. They saw how the Sun permanently lights up (except in the case of
an eclipse) the half of the Earth's surface that is facing it, while the other
half of the globe is in darkness. The Earth turns on its own axis and the
lighting remains the same, so that an area in the form of a half-sphere makes
one revolution around the Earth in twenty-four hours while the other
half-sphere, that has remained in darkness, makes the same revolution in the
same time. This perpetual rotation of night and day is quite clearly described
in the Qur'an. It is easy for the human understanding to grasp this notion
nowadays because we have the idea of the Sun's (relative) immobility and the
Earth's rotation. This process of perpetual coiling, including the
interpenetration of one sector by another is expressed in the Qur'an just as if
the concept of the Earth's roundness had already been conceived at the
time-which was obviously not the case. Further to the above reflections on the
sequence of day and night, one must also mention, with a quotation of some
verses from the Qur'an, the idea that there is more than one Orient and one
Occident. This is of purely descriptive interest because these phenomena rely on
the most commonplace observations. The idea is mentioned here with the aim of
reproducing as faithfully as possible all that the Qur'an has to say on this
subject.
The following are examples:
--In sura 70 verse 40, the expression 'Lord of Orients
and Occidents'.
--In sura 55, verse 17, the expression 'Lord of the two
Orients and the two Occidents'.
--In sura 43, verse 38, a reference to the 'distance
between the two Orients', an image intended to express the immense size of
the distance separating the two points.
Anyone who carefully watches the sunrise and sunset knows
that the Sun rises at different point of the Orient and sets at different points
of the Occident, according to season. Bearings taken on each of the horizons
define the extreme limits that mark the two Orients and Occidents, and between
these there are points marked off throughout the year. The phenomenon described
here is rather commonplace, but what mainly deserves attention in this chapter
are the other topics dealt with, where the description of astronomical phenomena
referred to in the Qur'an is in keeping with modern data.
The expansion of the Universe is the most imposing
discovery of modern science. Today it is a firmly established concept and the
only debate centres around the way this is taking place.
It was first suggested by the general theory of relativity
and is backed up by physics in the examination of the galactic spectrum; the
regular movement towards the red section of their spectrum may be explained by
the distancing of one galaxy from another. Thus the size of the Universe is
probably constantly increasing and this increase will become bigger the further
away the galaxies are from us. The speeds at which these celestial bodies are
moving may, in the course of this perpetual expansion, go from fractions of the
speed of light to speeds faster than this.
The following verse of the Qur'an (sura 51, verse 47)
where God is speaking, may perhaps be compared with modern ideas: "The
heaven, We have built it with power. Verily. We are expanding it."
'Heaven' is the translation of the word sama' and this is
exactly the extra-terrestrial world that is meant.
'We are expanding it' is the translation of the plural
present participle musi'una of the verb ausa'a meaning 'to make wider,
more spacious, to extend, to expand'.
Ramidullah in his translation
of the Qur'an talks of the widening of the heavens and
space, but he includes a question mark. There are those who arm themselves with
authorized scientific opinion in their commentaries and give the meaning stated
here. This is true in the case of the Muntakab, a book of commentaries edited by
the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Cairo. It refers to the expansion of
the Universe in totally unambiguous terms