In the Koran, there is a verse that reads that God can stop the shadow from moving if He so wills.  God then continues by saying that He would then redesign the sun.  Just from this verse alone, one would conclude that this verse is talking about a geocentric model of the solar system (which we know is flawed; our solar system is heliocentric).  However, there are other few verses that suggest a heliocentric model (though these will be examine later).  Let us assume that the Koran is from God and that God is talking about the heliocentric model in the above verse.  If this is so, then the only way God can stop the Shadow moving is for Him to stop the Earth from rotating.  Further on, He would have to stop the Earth’s revolution around the sun too.  If God does not stop the Earth from revolving, then due to the Earth’s tilt, the shadow will tend to move as the overhead position (90 degrees) of the sun at noon shifts along a longitude from the southern tropic 23.5 degrees heading to 23.5 degrees North.  Now if God halts both the rotation and the revolution, then we will have no seasons and most likely half of the Earth not facing the sun will experience below freezing temperature (though the warmth of the heated air from the side of the Earth from the Sun will move to the air over the side not facing the sun).  I am still sure the weather of the side of the Earth not facing the sun will be cold nonetheless.  God’s actions will have drastic changes to the wind patterns (prevailing winds and hurricanes will not swerve as they move from point to point), weather patterns, climate (no seasons so things will tend to remain pretty static), and many things more.  I do not understand how God redesigning the Sun would make things here on Earth all right.  He would have to redesign the Earth to ensure the side of the Earth not facing the Sun is at least habitable by maybe boosting geothermal energy.

 

The other verse that suggests that may be the Koran proposes a heliocentric model is one that says to people that you see mountains fixed but in fact they are moving.   Mountains can only be moving if the Earth as a whole is rotating or if the Earth is moving around the Sun. The movement could also be due to the fact that the Galaxy as a whole is moving or that the sun and the Earth revolve around the milkyway’s center.  There is another possibility: the verse could mean that the mountains are rising (moving, though slowly) due to one continental plate sliding into another.  If this last one is true then it is quite probable that the Koran is proposing a geocentric model and not heliocentric model.  Even another verse talking about the Sun and moon each having orbits and the moon not catching up with the Sun make somewhat more sense as a geocentric model than a heliocentric model. 

 

If the author of the verse meant that the mountains are moving due to rotation and revolution, then the author must be talking about heliocentric model.  Does this necessarily mean that the Koran is therefore the work of God and nor Muhammad.  After all, it is only recently that many people around the world believe in the heliocentric model.  For a very long time due to Aristotle’s influence and the Church’s backing many believed that the Earth was at the center of the solar system.  However, what many people don’t know is that Aristarchus, a greek scholar long before Copernicus or the Prophet, proposed that the Sun was at the center of the Universe and therefore deduce that the Earth must be rotating.  If Aristarchus could suggest this, then is it unreasonable to assume that a person like Muhammad could come up with the heliocentric model.  May be even then, that is during Muhammad’s time, people were aware of the theories of Greek scholars.   People like Aristarchus may have even deduced the revolution of the Earth around the sun; I mean they saw other planets moving along the night sky.  Also, they must have known about long nights and short nights; they might have known about seasons.  I mean the Greeks had known that the Earth was spherical and they had even measured the radius of the Earth. Given their curios nature they may have known about these other things.  And they may have passed these on to surrounding cultures during trading with them and traveling.

 

If the Koran is referring to a heliocentric model, then the verse about the Sun and the Moon each having orbits and the moon not catching up to the sun does not make sense.  I mean the Sun traces an orbit around the center of the galaxy and the moon traces its orbit around the Earth.  So where does the question of catching up ever arise.  And if it is talking about separate orbits than the catching up has to do with what we see in the sky.  But we do see the moon during daytime and the moon does catch up with the sun during a solar eclipse.  However, there is another verse that talks about an eclipse in the Koran.  So what did the author mean by catching up.  Is it to emphasize that the Sun is moving around the center of Galaxy.  That would be very impressive and indeed divinely inspired.  But I am reluctant to conclude.  I still feel that something is not right here.  The verses (all the verses that talk about the moon, sun, eclipses) will have to be scrutinized to see if they stand up to scientific observations of our time.

 

However, if the author knew the heliocentric model and knew about short nights and daytimes than why is it that fasting is to be initiated when stars begin to fade away and broken when night sets in.  I mean this cannot be true of cities near the Arctic Circle.  I mean many cities can have very long nights and very short days and vice versa.  So not everyone will be fasting the same amount of time.   It doesn’t sound fair, equal.  I mean what about when some cities experience day light for months without having nights.   I mean they cannot fast for months without breaking their fasts; people would die.  All this would be resolved if the Koran means fasting should take place during one the two times during the year when the sun is directly overhead the Equator.  Then all places on Earth (except the north and south poles) will experience 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of nighttime.  However, it seems that the author is not aware of this fact.  But still given other verses (those examined in previous paragraphs) this is still not conclusive.  Things still seem not to add up.  One could conclude that probably the Koran had more than one author.  However, the numerical structure of 19 in the Koran makes this improbable; unless if the future authors may have known about the code of the original author.  Some of the code seems difficult but possible to duplicate given patience and many years, but the code regarding the basmalah seems improbable to make without divine inspiration or perhaps some undiscovered mathematical property of sequencing numbers in some particular way.  Both Hebrews and Muhammad seem to have had an interest in geometrical values (though the Hebrew system is slightly different from the Arabic version).  May be religious scholar at Muhammad’s time were interested or aware of people in history constructing texts using numbers.  The bible seems to have a similar structure around the number 7 (the structuring of some paragraphs seems as impressive as the Koran’s 19).  The pattern of ALM in connection to 19 is interesting because most of the A’s were added later in the Koran much after the prophet’s death.  It is amazing that the miracle of 19 in connection to ALM might not have been observed at the time of the Prophet.  Unless whoever add the aliphs knew of the 19 code before.  Or may be those who counted the aliphs to come with 19 ignored some Aliphs.   May be even the basmalah miracle is no miracle in that may be the long numbers they divided by 19 to see if they were divisible are not actually divisible; may the algorithms they used were not correctly written.  May be the discoverers of the many patterns were lying.  I mean most people have not checked if the large numbers are indeed divisible by 19.  Unfortunately, the discoverers never documented their exact research approaches, both their failures and successes and methods uses and algorithms implemented.  But again I cannot be sure of anything.  All I know is that basmalah miracle is much more impressive than the ALMS.  Other simpler structure like 114 chapters and 6000+ verses (even the counts of the ALMS and the other letters) all being multiples of 19 are not easy to construct textually but it is possible even for the Prophet to construct these given patience, good number and arithmetic skills and a number of years at most.  I mean the Chinese used abacuses and they were good.  We will have to find out the mode of numerals used during the Prophets time.  As I understand the actual set of Arabic numerals evolved after the Prophet’s death.  But this does not mean that the Prophet did not have a counting system at hand that may have been quite good in the hands of skilled people. 

 

Also, talking about fasting. Many people have inferred that the Koranic month is 30 days.  And there are verses that say that months total 12.  So this would mean 360 days.  Even the Egyptians and later the Romans devised much better calendars than this to ensure that people can track the seasons as accurately as possible.  I mean having 360 days will eventually cause problems for farmers and we would have to manually add up a fixed number of days after a considerable number of years in order to keep track of the seasons for knowing when to harvest and other farming or clothing needs.