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| Saturday, 6 November 2004 |
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Ramadhan - anniversary of the Holy Quran by Tuan Riza Rassool Month of Ramadhan in the Islamic calendar has double significance for Muslims.
While the importance and benefits of fasting are widely known, the revelation of Holy Quran has received less attention than it should have. After all, this Scripture governs all aspects of a Muslim's life including fasting itself. Muslims believes the Holy Quran to be a divine source of knowledge. To emphasize its Divine Authorship, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) called Holy Quran as the greatest miracle - the pinnacle of all miracles. So, the question arises - what makes a Scripture divine? There are many criteria to list but for the sake of brevity let me list out a few important ones. First, Scripture should be free of errors and contradictions. When a Scripture has many errors and contradictions, it loses its credibility and the divinity of the Scripture will be thrown into doubt. This is based on the reasonable understanding that God does not make mistakes. Next, the revelation should teach good moral values and free of absurdities, if not, its authenticity would be brought into question. The language of the revelation should be a direct address from God to mankind. For the test of divinity to stand, this is common sense. If the language gives a hint of an intervention of a third person, then the Scripture can be subjected to many errors and contradictions and the divine source would be questionable. But above all, the divine revelation should not contradict well-proven scientific facts. In my humble opinion, I consider the latter to be the truer and easily verifiable test of divine source. Scientific facts are universal knowledge and can be used to measure old scriptures for its true origin - divine or not. But the Holy Quran is not a book of science, and this, in spite of so many verses that incite people to think, observe, rationalize, and to use sound judgement. Nor is it a book of philosophy. It does not propound the Theory of Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, or other scientific facts that were recently discovered. To look for scientific treatises in the Quran, or indeed in any Scripture, is futile. But the basic fundamentals of sciences, revealed fourteen centuries ago, are laid out which points to and validates the source of this knowledge as divine. There are many branches of sciences Holy Quran reveals. However, I have chosen to highlight the fascinating subject of astronomy. Here are some samples: Creation of the universe: 'The Big Bang' The creation of the universe is explained by astrophysicists in a widely accepted phenomenon, popularly known as the 'Big Bang'. According to the 'Big Bang' theory, the whole universe was initially one big mass (Primary Nebula) and a mighty secondary separation (Big Bang) resulted in the formation of Galaxies. These then divided to form stars, planets, the sun, the moon, etc. The origin and the complexities of the universe is so unique that the probability of it occurring by 'chance' is zero. The Qur'an explains the origin of the universe in its own inimitable style: "Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before We (We is a Royal plural) clove them asunder?" [Al-Qur'an 21:30] The striking congruence between the Qur'anic verse and the 'Big Bang' is inescapable! How could a book, which first appeared in the deserts of Arabia 1400 years ago, contain this profound scientific truth? Gaseous mass before the creation of galaxies Scientists say that celestial matter was initially in the form of gaseous matter before the galaxies in the universe were formed. The following Quranic verse refers to this state of the universe: "Moreover, He comprehended in His design the sky, And it had been (as) smoke: He said to it and to the earth: 'Come ye together, willingly or unwillingly.' They said: 'We do come (together), in willing obedience." [Al-Qur'an 41:11] Again, this fact is a corollary to the 'Big Bang' and was not known to the Arabs during the time of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). What then, could have been the source of this knowledge? The sun rotates For a long time, European philosophers and scientists believed that the earth stood still in the center of the universe and every other body including the sun moved around it. In the West, only in 1609 the German scientist Yohannus Keppler published the 'Astronomia Nova' concluded that not only do the planets move in elliptical orbits around the sun, they also rotate upon their axis at irregular speeds. With this knowledge it became possible for European scientists to explain correctly many of the mechanisms of the solar system including the sequence of night and day. Even after these discoveries, it was thought that the Sun was stationary and did not rotate about its axis like the Earth. Consider the following Quranic verse: "It is He Who created the night and the day, And the sun and the moon: All (the celestial bodies) swim along, each in its rounded course." [Al-Qur'an 21:33] Most of the school textbooks have incorporated the fact that the sun rotates about its axis once every 25 days. In fact, the sun travels through space at roughly 150 miles per second, and takes about 200 million years to complete one revolution around the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. "It is not permitted to the sun to catch up the moon, nor can the night outstrip the day: Each (just) swim along in (its own) orbit (according to Law)." [Al-Quran 36:40]. This verse mentions an essential fact discovered by modern astronomy, i.e. the existence of the individual orbits of the sun and the moon, and their journey through space with their own motion. The 'fixed place' towards, which the sun travels, carrying with it the solar system, has been located exactly by modern astronomy. It has been given a name, the Solar Apex. The solar system is indeed moving in space towards a point situated in the constellation of Hercules (alpha Layer) whose exact location is firmly established. The moon rotates around its axis in the same duration that it takes to revolve around the earth. It takes approximately 29 days to complete one rotation. One cannot help but be amazed at the scientific accuracy of the Quranic verses. Should we not ponder over the question: "What was the source of knowledge contained in the Quran?" The death of the sun The light of the sun is due to a chemical process on its surface that has been taking place continuously for the past five billion years. It will come to an end at some point of time in the future when the sun will be totally extinguished leading to extinction of all life on earth. Regarding the sun's impermanence existence the Quran says: "And the Sun runs its course for a period determined for it; that is the decree of (Him) The Exalted in Might, The All-Knowing." [Al-Quran 36:38] "The Sun runs its course to a settled place (Solar Apex). That is the decree of the Almighty, the All Knowing." (Holy Quran 36:38). It is not even common knowledge even today, to believe that the Sun moves and will settle in a fixed place and finally extinguish. How can an illiterate Arab from the desert, when the whole world at that time believed that the world was flat, with no telescope to help have such astounding knowledge in Astronomy 1400 years ahead of time! The presence of interstellar matter Space outside organized astronomical systems was earlier assumed to be a vacuum. Astrophysicists later discovered the presence of bridges of matter in this interstellar space. These bridges of matter are called plasma, and consist of completely ionized gas containing equal number of free electrons and positive ions. Plasma is sometimes called the fourth state of matter (besides the three known states viz. solid, liquid and gas). The Quran mentions the presence of this interstellar material in the following verse: "He Who created the heavens and the earth and all that is between." [Al-Quran 25:59] The Holy Quran was ahead of it's time to mention the presence of interstellar galactic material in space. The expanding universe In 1925, an American astronomer by the name of Edwin Hubble, provided observational evidence that all galaxies are receding from one another, which implies that the universe is expanding. The expansion of the universe is now an established scientific fact. This is what Al-Quran says regarding the nature of the universe: "The heaven, We have built it with power. Verily, We are expanding it." [Al-Qur'an 51:47] Stephen Hawking, in his book, 'A Brief History of Time', says, "The discovery that the universe is expanding was one of the great intellectual revolutions of the 20th century." The Quran mentioned the expansion of the universe, before man even learnt to build a telescope! Some may say that the presence of astronomical facts in the Quran is not surprising since the Arabs were advanced in the field of astronomy. They are correct in acknowledging the advancement of the Arabs in the field of astronomy. However they fail to realize that the Quran was revealed centuries before the Arabs excelled in astronomy. Moreover many of the scientific facts mentioned above regarding astronomy, such as the origin of the universe with a Big Bang, were not known to the Arabs even at the peak of their scientific advancement. The scientific facts mentioned in the Qur'an are therefore not due to the Arabs' advancement in astronomy. Indeed, the reverse is true. The Arabs advanced in astronomy, because astronomy occupies a place in the Quran. It must be stressed that the Quran is accurate about many things, but accuracy does not necessarily mean that a book is a divine revelation. In fact, accuracy is only one of the criteria for divine revelations. Almighty God has in a few concise verses answered questions that had taken some of the greatest physicists and astronomers many centuries to answer. It is only in this century that they finally found the truth. The Quran states, "This book is a divine revelation; if you do not believe that, then what is it?" In other words, the reader is challenged to come up with some other explanation. Here is a book made of paper and ink. Where did it come from? It says it is a divine revelation; if it is not, then what is its source? |
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Produced by Lake House |
This is the month of fasting, but, Muslims also commemorate the first
revelation of the Holy Quran 1400 years ago to Prophet Muhammad (peace and
blessing of Allah be upon him). The importance of this month is profound
for Muslims and is considered the blessed month in the Islamic calendar.
