Religious Scripture and Science, Conflict or Conciliation? A Muslim Perspective 1

Reli­gious Scrip­ture and Sci­ence, Con­flict or Con­cil­i­a­tion ? A Mus­lim Perspective

Tran­script of speech at Inter­faith Dia­logue 4, organ­ised by MMU Mela­ka

PART 1

Bis­mil­lahir Rohmanir Rohim. In the name of Almighty God, Most Gra­cious, Most Mer­ci­ful. Alham­dulil­lahi Rob­bil ?Alamin. All praise is due to Him alone, The Lord, Cher­ish­er and Sus­tain­er of the Universe.

The Chair­per­son, Dis­tin­guished Guests, Learned Speak­ers, Broth­ers and Sis­ters, I wel­come you with the uni­ver­sal greet­ing of Islam ; Assalamu?alaikum Warohmat­ul­lahi Wabarokatuh ; May Peace, Bless­ing and Mer­cy of Almighty God be with you.

First of all I will like to thank the organ­isors for this invi­ta­tion. I also will like to con­grat­u­late MMU Malac­ca for orga­niz­ing the 4th Inter­faith Forum?Syabas !

The sub­ject for this evening is Reli­gious Scrip­tures and Sci­ence, Con­flict or Con­cil­i­a­tion?” This sub­ject is basi­cal­ly divid­ed into two parts. First­ly we have to com­pare our Holy Scrip­tures against Mod­ern Sci­ence. Next we need to ana­lyze whether they are com­pat­i­ble or incompatible.

This top­ic is time­ly and rel­e­vant. Today many peo­ple are of the opin­ion that sci­ence and reli­gion can­not get along. They believe one would only progress if they were to fol­low sci­ence and would stay back­wards if they were to fol­low reli­gion. Is this true ? The famous physi­cist and Nobel Prize win­ner, Albert Ein­stein once said ; Sci­ence with­out Reli­gion is mis­guid­ed and Reli­gion with­out Sci­ence is blind”.

The Holy Scrip­ture in Islam is the Qur’an. We Mus­lims believe that the Qur?an is of com­plete­ly divine ori­gin, being the ver­ba­tim words of God sent as guid­ance for all humankind. The Mus­lims believe that the Qur’an is the last and final rev­e­la­tion of God sent through the last and final prophet of God, Muham­mad pbuh 1400 years ago.

The Qur’an is not the book of ?sci­ence ? but it is the book of ?signs?. The Qur?an con­tains more than 6000 signs or ayats of which no less than 1000 of it touch­es on sci­en­tif­ic facts.

We all know that sci­ence some­time takes a u‑turn. There­fore I would only be speak­ing on estab­lished sci­en­tif­ic facts and not on the­o­ries or hypoth­e­sis as they are not based on proofs but assumptions.

Let us ana­lyze how the uni­verse was cre­at­ed. We all know about the ?Big Bang?, where the uni­verse was once joined togeth­er as one big pri­ma­ry neb­u­la. Then there was a big bang or explo­sion which result­ed the for­ma­tion of galax­ies. These then divid­ed to form the stars, plan­ets, moons, satel­lites and the earth we live in. Sci­en­tist esti­mates that there are about 250 bil­lion galax­ies in the uni­verse and each galaxy con­tains 300 bil­lion stars !

The Qur’an speaks about the ?Big Bang ? in 21:30 ?Do not the unbe­liev­ers see that the heav­ens and earth was once joined togeth­er (as one unit of cre­ation) before We clove them asunder?.
In 1929, Edwin Hub­ble with the aid of a giant tele­scope dis­cov­ered that the galax­ies were mov­ing fur­ther and fur­ther from the earth. Lat­er some oth­er sci­en­tists dis­cov­ered that the galax­ies were also mov­ing fur­ther from one anoth­er. This proved that the uni­verse is not sta­ble but it is steadi­ly expand­ing. Stephen Hawkins in his book A Brief His­to­ry of Time” mentioned :

The dis­cov­ery that the uni­verse was expand­ing was one of the great­est intel­lec­tu­al rev­o­lu­tions of the 20th century”.

1400 years ago, before man even learnt how to build a tele­scope, the Qur?an men­tions in 51:47 ?For it is We who cre­at­ed the uni­verse, which is steadi­ly expand­ing?. If the uni­verse is expand­ing with time then it means if we go back in time, the uni­verse would be shrink­ing to a point of zero mat­ter. Thus the uni­verse must have been cre­at­ed from noth­ing ; no mat­ter, no time and no space ! This also proofs that the uni­verse didn?t exist by itself but was cre­at­ed by a Cre­ator God. The Qur?an also men­tions this fact in 6:101 ?Allah is the orig­i­na­tor of heav­ens and earth?. Sci­ence does not reject the exis­tence of God the Cre­ator of the uni­verse but it rejects the mod­els of gods (demigods). Trans­lat­ed in Ara­bic, it will read La ila­ha Ilal­lah” which means There is no god but Allah!”

For a long time Euro­pean philoso­phers and sci­en­tist believed in the Geo­cen­tric con­cept, i.e.: the earth is in the cen­tre of the uni­verse and every thing in the uni­verse includ­ing our sun moved around it. In 1512, Nicholas Coper­ni­cus put for­ward his Helio­cen­tric The­o­ry of Plan­e­tary Move­ment, i.e.; the sun is motion­less in the cen­tre of our solar sys­tem and the plan­ets moved around it.

Today we know as a fact that the sun is not motion­less but it also moves in its orbit around the cen­tre of our Milky Way galaxy at the speed of 150 miles per sec­ond (720 000 Km per hour). It takes about 200 mil­lion years for the sun to com­plete one orbit. The Qur?an men­tions in 36:40 ?It is not per­mit­ted for the sun to catch up with moon, nor can the night out­strip the day, each (just) swims along in its own orbit (accord­ing to law)?.

It was only a few decades ago that we dis­cov­ered the sun too rotates around its axes which takes about 25 days to com­plete one rota­tion. Even this fact is also men­tioned in the Qur’an in 21:33 It is He who cre­at­ed the night and the day, and the sun and the moon, all swims along its round­ed course”. The Ara­bic word used for ?swim ? is ?yas­bahun ? which is derived from the word saba­ha which means motion from a mov­ing body”.

Pre­vi­ous­ly mankind thought the earth was flat. They were afraid to sail too far lest they will reach the edge and fall. The first per­son to sail around the world was Sir Fran­cis Drake in 1597. Only then peo­ple knew that the world was spherical.

1400 years ago, when the whole world thought that the earth was flat, the Qur?an gave the spher­i­cal descrip­tion of the earth in sev­er­al vers­es. In 31:29 ?Allah merges night into day and He merges day into night?. Merg­ing means that the night slow­ly and grad­u­al­ly changes into day and vice ver­sa. This is only pos­si­ble if the earth was spher­i­cal because if the earth was flat, there will be a sud­den change from night to day.

Fur­ther­more in 39:5 He makes the night over­lap the day and the day over­lap the night”. The Ara­bic word used here is kawara” mean­ing to over­lap or to coil, i.e. to coil a tur­ban indi­cat­ing the earth is spherical.

The exact shape of earth is men­tioned in 79:30 and He had made the earth egg-shaped”. The Ara­bic word used here is daha­ha which comes from the root word duhiya mean­ing ostrich egg. The earth is not per­fect­ly spher­i­cal like a ball but it is lit­tle flat on the poles and slight­ly bulging in the cen­tre. It is geospher­i­cal just like the shape of an ostrich egg.

Geol­o­gists tell us today that the radius of the earth is 3750 miles and the out­er sol­id crust is very thin, rang­ing between 1 to 30 miles. The deep­er lay­ers are hot and flu­id. The earth is just like an egg which has a thin lay­er of sol­id shell on out­side and inside is flu­id. The earth spins around it axes at a speed of more than 1000 miles/​hour. Imag­ine if we spin the egg at the speed of only 100 miles/​hour, what will hap­pen ? The egg could not sur­vive the pres­sure and it will explode. The earth too could not have sur­vived if not for the fact that the moun­tains have been sta­bi­liz­ing the earth as well as act­ing as pegs which holds the earth crust together.

The Qur?an men­tions about the moun­tains giv­ing sta­bil­i­ty to earth in 21:31 ?and We have set on the earth moun­tains stand­ing firm, lest it should shake with them?. The Qur?an also men­tions about the func­tion of moun­tains as pegs in 78:6 – 7 ?have We not made the earth as a wide expanse, and the moun­tains as pegs??

The Qur?an says in 21:30 {We made from water every liv­ing thing{. Today with the help of advanced sci­ence equip­ments we come to know that cyto­plasm, the basic sub­stance in cell is made of 80% water. Research also has shown that most organ­isms con­tain 50% — 90% water. Every liv­ing thing needs water for its exis­tence. Who could have known this fact 1400 years ago and that too in the desert of Arabia ?

A group of Arab stu­dents col­lect­ed all the vers­es in the Qur?an relat­ed to embry­ol­o­gy, trans­lat­ed them into Eng­lish and pre­sent­ed to Prof. (Dr) Kei­th Moore, who was the Pro­fes­sor of embry­ol­o­gy and the Chair­man of the Depart­ment of Anato­my in Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, Cana­da. Present­ly he is one of the high­est author­i­ties in the field of embry­ol­o­gy. After care­ful­ly exam­in­ing those vers­es, he said most of the vers­es from the Qur?an on embry­ol­o­gy were in per­fect con­for­mi­ty with mod­ern dis­cov­er­ies in the field of embryology.

How­ev­er there were few vers­es which he could not com­ment as sci­ence has not reach to that lev­el. One such verse was from 96:1 – 2 Pro­claim ! In the name of thy Lord and Cher­ish­er, who cre­at­ed man out of alaq”. The Ara­bic word alaq means clot of con­gealed blood or some­thing that clings or leech like sub­stance. Prof Kei­th Moore at that time didn?t know whether the embryo at ini­tial stage looks like a leech. He took a dia­gram of leech and stud­ied the embryo under a very pow­er­ful micro­scope. He was aston­ished at the strik­ing resem­blance between the two.

In 1981 dur­ing the 7th Med­ical Con­fer­ence in Dammam, Sau­di Ara­bia, Dr Moore said : It is clear to me that these state­ments must have come to Muham­mad from God or Allah, because almost all of this knowl­edge was not dis­cov­ered until many cen­turies lat­er. This proves to me that Muham­mad must have been a Mes­sen­ger of God”.

The embry­on­ic stages is accu­rate­ly men­tioned in the Qur’an in 23:14 Then We made the sperm into alaqah (a clot of con­gealed blood), then We made into mudghah (foe­tus lump), this mudghah is trans­formed into izam (bones) and cloth it with lahm (flesh)”.

In this verse Allah states that the sperm is made into alaqah (clot of con­gealed blood or some­thing that clings or leech like sub­stance). It is sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly accept­ed that the embryo in ini­tial stage looks like a leech, also looks like a clot of con­gealed blood and it also clings to the wall of uterus. Then it is made into mudghah (foe­tus lump) and trans­formed into izam (bones) and clothed with lahm (flesh or mus­cles). These stages are in per­fect agree­ment with mod­ern sci­en­tif­ic discoveries !

We can go on and on but time does not per­mit me to do so. If you have any ques­tions, do let me know and I will do my lev­el best to answer them.

PART 2

The Qur’an says in 4:82 Do they not con­sid­er the Qur’an (with care)? Had it been from oth­er than God, they would sure­ly have found there­in much dis­crep­an­cy.” For a scrip­ture to claim that it is from a divine source there could not have been even a sin­gle dis­crep­an­cy or con­tra­dic­tion in it. There are more than 1000 vers­es in the Qur’an that touch­es on sci­ence. About 80% of them have been proven to be cor­rect and are in per­fect agree­ment with mod­ern sci­ence. The bal­ance 20% can­not be proven to be cor­rect or incor­rect because mod­ern sci­ence has not reached the lev­el of the Qur’an !

There is not even a sin­gle verse of the Qur’an that goes against estab­lished sci­en­tif­ic facts. On the con­trary the Qur’an which was revealed 1400 years ago con­tains pro­found sci­en­tif­ic facts that were yet to be dis­cov­ered by humankind cen­turies later.

Any per­son who claims that he /​she is log­i­cal, ratio­nal, sci­en­tif­ic and hon­est will have no oth­er choice but to admit that the Qur?an is the word of Almighty God ! If the Qur’an is not the word of God, then you tell me who else could have writ­ten it 1400 years ago.

Some allege that the Qur?an must have been writ­ten by Prophet Muham­mad with the help of oth­er peo­ple. To dis­prove this alle­ga­tion it is enough to say that it was impos­si­ble for any sin­gle human being at that time to have their own knowl­edge on all the sci­en­tif­ic facts men­tioned above.

Oth­ers may allege that the Qur’an have been copied from ear­li­er scrip­tures. The point to note here is that there is not a sin­gle scrip­ture of the past that men­tions these sci­en­tif­ic facts with such accu­ra­cy. On the con­trary you will find many errors and con­tra­dic­tions in them.

There have also been claims that the Qur’an was writ­ten by Satan. Then why the Qur’an says in 4:119 Who­ev­er, for­sak­ing God, takes Satan for a friend, has of a sure­ty suf­fered a loss that is man­i­fest”. In 24:21 fol­low not Satan’s foot­steps, if any will fol­low the foot­steps of Satan, he will (but) com­mand what is shame­ful and wrong”. If Satan was the author of Qur’an, why would the Satan con­demn itself ?

Tonight when you go home, you owe your­self at least to pon­der on this truth. The Qur?an says in 2:256 truth stands out clear from false­hood” and in 17:81 truth has arrived and false­hood per­ished ; for false­hood is (by its nature) bound to perish”.

Thank you. Religious Scripture and Science, Conflict or Conciliation? A Muslim Perspective 2Endmark

Cite this arti­cle as : Shah Kir­it bin Kaku­lal Govin­d­ji, Reli­gious Scrip­ture and Sci­ence, Con­flict or Con­cil­i­a­tion ? A Mus­lim Per­spec­tive,” in Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma, Feb­ru­ary 22, 2006, last accessed March 28, 2024, https://​bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org/​q​u​r​a​n​/​r​e​l​i​g​i​o​u​s​-​s​c​r​i​p​t​u​r​e​-​a​n​d​-​s​c​i​e​n​c​e​-​c​o​n​f​l​i​c​t​-​o​r​-​c​o​n​c​i​l​i​a​t​i​o​n​-​a​-​m​u​s​l​i​m​-​p​e​r​s​p​e​c​t​i​ve/

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3 responses to “Reli­gious Scrip­ture and Sci­ence, Con­flict or Con­cil­i­a­tion ? A Mus­lim Perspective”

  1. Dave Avatar

    i think any­one dis­cussing this sub­ject could have dis­cussed more recent issues like DNA and irre­ducible com­plex­i­ty at the bio­chem­i­cal lev­el and quote oth­er sources like Fran­cis Crick and Michael Behe too :)

    Amaz­ing that these stuffs are not updat­ed when the sci­en­tif­ic enter­prise is advanc­ing so much, let’s keep up guys !

  2. danny Avatar
    danny

    I have the Dr Naik vs. Dr Camp­bell debate and I don’t think it is an exact copy” of it. Per­haps the the data with­in it is similar/​same to the one pre­sent­ed by Dr Zaik — such as the vers­es, names of doc­tors, sci­en­tif­ic sub­jects etc…I think any­one dis­cussing this sub­ject would be dis­cussing the same issues and sources…

  3. Arafee Avatar
    Arafee

    isn’t this exact copy of Dr. Zakir Naik’s debate with dr. campbell.

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