Part 8 Scientific Facts in the Quran (Part 1) : "Proof that Islam is the truth''
Assalamaleykum Arahmatullahi va Barakatu, may the peace & blessings of Allah be upon all of you. Welcome back to the proof that Islam is the Truth. And we've been talking about some of the amazing miracles of the Quran & the scientific miracles, those facts that can be found in the Quran, that leave us awe-struck. How could this information be in a book 1400 years old? And we were looking at those verses in the Quran concerning the development of the human foetus in the womb & we were also reading a Hadeeth of the Prophet Muhammad may Allah's peace & blessings be upon him.
When the Prophet Muhammad mentioned that the 42 nights have passed over the conceptus Allah sends an angel to it who shapes it, makes it ears & eyes & skin & flesh & bones & then he says: "Oh, Lord, is it a male or a female?" And your Lord decides what he wishes & an angel records it. So it is at the 42nd day or just after the 40th day that it only then becomes identifiable. And this is a fact. This is a scientific fact. And it's very interesting, it's true also that the Prophet Muhammad may God's peace & blessings be upon him mentioned that there are some things that the knowledge of it is only known to Allah Subhana Wa Ta Allah. And one of the things that Prophet mentioned is what is the sex of the child in the womb. As one of the Muslim scholars pointed out is that this is only up until the 40th day. Because after the 40th day according to this authentic Hadeeth of the Prophet Sallalahu Alleyhem Va Salam, may God's peace & blessings be upon him, the angels know , the angel was in the womb shaping the conseptus, shaping the embryo, asks: "Is it a male or a female?" And so from that time of course the angel knows & if the angel knows, as the scholar pointed out, anyone can know. So this is also a truly amazing statement of scientific accuracy & this is information that in reality we have only begun to discover recently.
We also find that the Hdeeth mentions the correct time for the recognisable growth of the features described & the sex of the foetus can only definitely be determined after 42 days. Now this piece of information was only known after the invention of powerful microscopes only decades ago. Now I've only mentioned the subject of the developing human being in the Quran & the Hdeeth of the Prophet Muhammad briefly. There is of course a vast amount of literature available if you would like to study this subject more & it's very easily available on the internet & indeed Dr Zakir Nike has produced a very nice book called "Modern science in the light of the Quran & Sunnah" So you can get hold of that from the Islamic research foundation Isha Allah if you want to explore that area more.
But what I thought I would do is mention a quote from Keith Moore who is the professor & chairman of the department of anatomy from the University of Toronto in Canada. And Keith Moore is one of the acknowledged experts in the field of the developing human being in its embryonic form. And his book "the developing human" is & has been for many years a standard textbook in universities & colleges all over the world. It's been translated into numerous different languages. And he was shown some of these statements in the Quran & the Hadeeth or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad concerning the development of the human embryo, & having studied them he came to a conclusion. And this is what he said: "Until the 19th century nothing was known about the classification of the stages of human development. A system of staging human embryos was developed around the end of the 19th century based upon alphabetical symbols. And during the 20th century numerals were used to describe 23 stages of embryonic development. This system of numbering the stages is not easy to follow & a better system would be based on the morphological changes.
In recent years the study of the Quran revealed another basis for the classification of the stages of developing embryo, which is based on easily understood actions and changes in shape. It utilizes terms that were used and sent by God to Prophet Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel and recorded in the Quran" And he goes on to say: "It is clear to me that these statements must have come to Muhammad from God 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 or Allah.
" Dear viewers, you need to think about this. He is one of the experts, perhaps the expert in the field, examining the information that is in the Quran & that has been mentioned on the tongue of the Prophet Muhammad. And he is saying that not only is it impossible for the information to have been known by anyone 1400 years ago. He also suggests that modern embryology should follow the system of development that has been mentioned in the Quranic verses. In other words the Quran has described the developments of the human embryo so beautifully & so effectively that this should be the basis upon which scientific textbooks are founded from now on. This is what Keith Moore is saying. So this is really a truly remarkable statement from a truly remarkable scientist who by the way has become a Muslim.
How did the Prophet Muhammad developed this information? From where did a man living in a desert 1400 years ago know, from where did he get the knowledge? this is the question that you have to ask. This is the question that you have to examine. The next theme we want to look at is the water cycle. The water cycle. That is the cycle of water where the Sun heats the sea & causes evaporation & from that evaporation we have clouds forming & how the winds move those clouds & from that rain falls.
Now the Quran accurately describes water cycle & the origin of underground springs. And we are going to be talking about that after the break, so whatever you do don't go away, because we have some more amazing facts for you in the proof that Islam is the Truth. Salam Allaeykum, welcome back to the proof that Islam is the Truth. And we are going through some of the amazing scientific statements in the Quran. Things that was impossible for Prophet Muhammad to have known 1400 years ago. Now one of the things we want to talk about is the water cycle. Now it may seem very obvious to us today about the water cycle. And for example the origin of underground springs.
But the ancient Greeks for example didn't seem to get it right despite all of their philosophy & their knowledge & their ability they actually theorised that underground springs were a product of spray that came off the sea & collected in caves. And then the spray that came off the sea & collected in cave dripped down into the underground reservoirs through a great sea called the "abyss". In fact it was not until the 18th century that the water cycle was really accurately described. Yet the Quran says 1400 years ago in the 39th sura in the 21st ayat: "have you not seen that Allah sent water down from the sky & led it through sources into the ground." This is a simple but in fact highly accurate description of the water cycle.
Another amazing fact that is mentioned in the Quran we find in the 24th sura of the Quran in the 40th verse. And it's talking about the states of those people who disbelieve & reject faith in God. The Quran describes the state of the disbeliever, the person who has rejected faith. "Like a darkness, a darkness that is so dark it is like the deep depths of darkness in a vast deep ocean overwhelmed with wave upon wave topped by a cloud, if a man stretches out his hand - he can hardly see it. For any to whom Allah gives no light there is no light." Now on the surface here Allah is giving a simple description. A person who does not believe in God & does not follow the guidance that Allah has sent down is a person who is in darkness. They are lost. Their life is a confusion. In fact their life is so confusing they can hardly see what is in front of them. This is how Allah is describing it: "Darkness upon darkness", confusion upon confusion. He can hardly see or understand what is happening. If God does not give a person light - there is no light. So it is describing a type of absence of light, of being able to see or know really what is truly going on.
And so this is the case that is described. So on the surface we have a very poetic, we have a very strong & vigorous & amazing description of this darkness & the state of being lost. Yet when we examine it in more detail there is something else going on here as well. There is a clue to some scientific truths.
First of all the Quran describes the vast deep ocean & it describes waves upon waves. Now of course most of us are familiar with the waves that are on top of the ocean. But what does it mean "waves upon waves"? Are there other waves in the ocean? Well, we are going to find out. Also the Quran about a person being deprived of light that they can hardly see. Now a ray of light is composed of seven colours: violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange & red. And light when it hits water goes through what is called refraction. That mean that for example in the upper 10 to 15 meters the water absorbs the red colour & as you go deeper each of the colours in the spectrum become absorbed by the water until you get to a depth of below about 1000 meters there is complete darkness.
Now what is amazing is that we also find in modern scientific discoveries that internal waves cover the deep waters of the seas & oceans. Because the deep waters have a higher density than the waters above them. So "waves upon waves": we have the internal waves in the deep-deep ocean & then we have the waves on top of the ocean & then the clouds & so on & so forth. They add to the darkness & disparity & the breaking up & the refracting of light. Now what is interesting is the deep darkness, remember what the Quran says: "they stretch out their hand they can hardly see it". This deep darkness begins below the internal waves in the ocean.
In fact there are certain fish down at those depths which need their own lights in order to be able to see. And amazingly Allah has created these creatures that can actually generate their own lights. Now this is really amazing because of course very recently no one has been able to penetrate & to reach those deep parts of the ocean. It is only with extremely sophisticated modern machinery & submarines & diving suits that someone has been able to go down to that depth. Yet we have the Quran 1400 years ago describing the internal waves of the oceans & the darkness that is there at the depths of the oceans. How on Earth, how in the heavens could a man living in the desert 1400 years ago have known about such detailed information about a science like oceanography? Well, professor Rao who is an expert in marine biology at the king Abdul Aziz university in Jeddah says: "1400 years ago a normal human being could not explain this phenomenon in so much detail. This information must have been coming from a supernatural source."
My dear viewers, this even is not the end of the amazing scientific statements in the Quran. Because the next thing I'm going to deal with is cosmology, the statements in the Quran concerning the universe. Now until recently, or we could say up until the 1960s there was a major controversy between scientists concerning the state of the Universe. Some scientists believe & have begun to develop the idea that the Universe is in the state of flux, that the Universe was in fact expanding. And from this theory of expanding Universe also came another theory which is commonly known today as the Big Bang theory. This is the idea that the Universe had a common origin in a singularity, in a dense, condensed type of matter. The Universe was infinitely small we could say part of dense matter & this infinitely small dense matter then exploded into what is the Universe that we know today. Now this was opposed by the static state theory, the static state theory. And this was very much preferred theory of atheists, that the Universe was the way it was eternally in the past & will keep on being that way eternally in the future.
And this was a theory that was really largely based at least initially & was believed in by Albert Einstein. And many people therefore followed on from that, with this idea of the static state theory. And so this idea of the Big Bang theory which was you know really held by Fred Hoyle. He was the person who supported this theory & Lemaitre who was opposing it with the idea of the Big Bang theory. Now evidence came to light that showed that variations in the light spectrum that were being emitted from galaxies & stars, which is called "Red shift" showed in fact that the Universe is expanding. And it's amazing that this scientific fact, that has now been confirmed, & it is agreed upon by almost unanimously all scientists in the field, that we live in an expanding universe.
And the evidence very-very clearly & strongly suggest that. What does the Quran said 1400 years ago? Before there were telescopes & all the means to discover this information the Quran says in the 51st sura in the 47th ayat: "The Heaven, We have built it with power & we are expanding it." Lets just repeat that again: "The Heaven, We have built it with power & we are expanding it." 1400 years ago the Quran is mentioning how the Universe is expanding. The next most important observational evidence was the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964 by a powerful telescope. And this had been predicted in the Big Bang theory as a relic of the hot-ionised plasma of the early Universe when it first cooled sufficiently to form neutral hydrogen & allowed space to become transparent to light.
And its discovery led to the general acceptance among physicists that the Big Bang is the best model for the origin & evolution of the Universe. What does the Quran say in the 21st sura in the 30th ayat? "Have not those who disbelieved known that the Heavens & the Earth were joined together as one united piece, then We parted them. And we have made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?" The common origin of the Universe or the singularity that scientists believe today the Universe originated from & which lead to the Big Bang. It is considered that the conditions of this singularity were so precise it is almost inconceivable that it could be in that way except that it has been made by an All-wise & powerful Creator. These are some of the amazing things that the Quran is telling us about the origin of the Universe.
The Quran also mentions that Allah turned to the Heavens when it was Dukhan. And the word dukhan in Arabic means smoke. This also accurately describes the hot gaseous mass of the Universe before the galaxies & the stars began to be formed. So here we have the Quran 1400 years ago talking about the expanding Universe, talking about the common origin of the Universe, that the Heavens & the Earth were one, talking about the gaseous state the smoke-like state of the early Universe.
This is in a book 1400 years old. Mentioning facts that scientists have only began to discover today & we have created from every living thing water. It's a fact that every living thing has its basis in & is fundamentally composed of water. You & me are about 70 to 80 % water. We are made of about 70 to 80 % water. The fact that has been mentioned in the Quran 1400 years ago. Will you not believe? Will you now not believe? What will it take to make you realise & to understand that the Quran is the Truth? That Muhammad is the Messenger of God? This is more evidence, the proof that Islam is the Truth. Join us for the next episode when we will be going through some more amazing facts from the Quran. Until then Assalamaleykum Arahmatullahi va Barakatu, may the peace & blessings of Allah & his guidance be with all of you.
When the Prophet Muhammad mentioned that the 42 nights have passed over the conceptus Allah sends an angel to it who shapes it, makes it ears & eyes & skin & flesh & bones & then he says: "Oh, Lord, is it a male or a female?" And your Lord decides what he wishes & an angel records it. So it is at the 42nd day or just after the 40th day that it only then becomes identifiable. And this is a fact. This is a scientific fact. And it's very interesting, it's true also that the Prophet Muhammad may God's peace & blessings be upon him mentioned that there are some things that the knowledge of it is only known to Allah Subhana Wa Ta Allah. And one of the things that Prophet mentioned is what is the sex of the child in the womb. As one of the Muslim scholars pointed out is that this is only up until the 40th day. Because after the 40th day according to this authentic Hadeeth of the Prophet Sallalahu Alleyhem Va Salam, may God's peace & blessings be upon him, the angels know , the angel was in the womb shaping the conseptus, shaping the embryo, asks: "Is it a male or a female?" And so from that time of course the angel knows & if the angel knows, as the scholar pointed out, anyone can know. So this is also a truly amazing statement of scientific accuracy & this is information that in reality we have only begun to discover recently.
We also find that the Hdeeth mentions the correct time for the recognisable growth of the features described & the sex of the foetus can only definitely be determined after 42 days. Now this piece of information was only known after the invention of powerful microscopes only decades ago. Now I've only mentioned the subject of the developing human being in the Quran & the Hdeeth of the Prophet Muhammad briefly. There is of course a vast amount of literature available if you would like to study this subject more & it's very easily available on the internet & indeed Dr Zakir Nike has produced a very nice book called "Modern science in the light of the Quran & Sunnah" So you can get hold of that from the Islamic research foundation Isha Allah if you want to explore that area more.
But what I thought I would do is mention a quote from Keith Moore who is the professor & chairman of the department of anatomy from the University of Toronto in Canada. And Keith Moore is one of the acknowledged experts in the field of the developing human being in its embryonic form. And his book "the developing human" is & has been for many years a standard textbook in universities & colleges all over the world. It's been translated into numerous different languages. And he was shown some of these statements in the Quran & the Hadeeth or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad concerning the development of the human embryo, & having studied them he came to a conclusion. And this is what he said: "Until the 19th century nothing was known about the classification of the stages of human development. A system of staging human embryos was developed around the end of the 19th century based upon alphabetical symbols. And during the 20th century numerals were used to describe 23 stages of embryonic development. This system of numbering the stages is not easy to follow & a better system would be based on the morphological changes.
In recent years the study of the Quran revealed another basis for the classification of the stages of developing embryo, which is based on easily understood actions and changes in shape. It utilizes terms that were used and sent by God to Prophet Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel and recorded in the Quran" And he goes on to say: "It is clear to me that these statements must have come to Muhammad from God 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 or Allah.
" Dear viewers, you need to think about this. He is one of the experts, perhaps the expert in the field, examining the information that is in the Quran & that has been mentioned on the tongue of the Prophet Muhammad. And he is saying that not only is it impossible for the information to have been known by anyone 1400 years ago. He also suggests that modern embryology should follow the system of development that has been mentioned in the Quranic verses. In other words the Quran has described the developments of the human embryo so beautifully & so effectively that this should be the basis upon which scientific textbooks are founded from now on. This is what Keith Moore is saying. So this is really a truly remarkable statement from a truly remarkable scientist who by the way has become a Muslim.
How did the Prophet Muhammad developed this information? From where did a man living in a desert 1400 years ago know, from where did he get the knowledge? this is the question that you have to ask. This is the question that you have to examine. The next theme we want to look at is the water cycle. The water cycle. That is the cycle of water where the Sun heats the sea & causes evaporation & from that evaporation we have clouds forming & how the winds move those clouds & from that rain falls.
Now the Quran accurately describes water cycle & the origin of underground springs. And we are going to be talking about that after the break, so whatever you do don't go away, because we have some more amazing facts for you in the proof that Islam is the Truth. Salam Allaeykum, welcome back to the proof that Islam is the Truth. And we are going through some of the amazing scientific statements in the Quran. Things that was impossible for Prophet Muhammad to have known 1400 years ago. Now one of the things we want to talk about is the water cycle. Now it may seem very obvious to us today about the water cycle. And for example the origin of underground springs.
But the ancient Greeks for example didn't seem to get it right despite all of their philosophy & their knowledge & their ability they actually theorised that underground springs were a product of spray that came off the sea & collected in caves. And then the spray that came off the sea & collected in cave dripped down into the underground reservoirs through a great sea called the "abyss". In fact it was not until the 18th century that the water cycle was really accurately described. Yet the Quran says 1400 years ago in the 39th sura in the 21st ayat: "have you not seen that Allah sent water down from the sky & led it through sources into the ground." This is a simple but in fact highly accurate description of the water cycle.
Another amazing fact that is mentioned in the Quran we find in the 24th sura of the Quran in the 40th verse. And it's talking about the states of those people who disbelieve & reject faith in God. The Quran describes the state of the disbeliever, the person who has rejected faith. "Like a darkness, a darkness that is so dark it is like the deep depths of darkness in a vast deep ocean overwhelmed with wave upon wave topped by a cloud, if a man stretches out his hand - he can hardly see it. For any to whom Allah gives no light there is no light." Now on the surface here Allah is giving a simple description. A person who does not believe in God & does not follow the guidance that Allah has sent down is a person who is in darkness. They are lost. Their life is a confusion. In fact their life is so confusing they can hardly see what is in front of them. This is how Allah is describing it: "Darkness upon darkness", confusion upon confusion. He can hardly see or understand what is happening. If God does not give a person light - there is no light. So it is describing a type of absence of light, of being able to see or know really what is truly going on.
And so this is the case that is described. So on the surface we have a very poetic, we have a very strong & vigorous & amazing description of this darkness & the state of being lost. Yet when we examine it in more detail there is something else going on here as well. There is a clue to some scientific truths.
First of all the Quran describes the vast deep ocean & it describes waves upon waves. Now of course most of us are familiar with the waves that are on top of the ocean. But what does it mean "waves upon waves"? Are there other waves in the ocean? Well, we are going to find out. Also the Quran about a person being deprived of light that they can hardly see. Now a ray of light is composed of seven colours: violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange & red. And light when it hits water goes through what is called refraction. That mean that for example in the upper 10 to 15 meters the water absorbs the red colour & as you go deeper each of the colours in the spectrum become absorbed by the water until you get to a depth of below about 1000 meters there is complete darkness.
Now what is amazing is that we also find in modern scientific discoveries that internal waves cover the deep waters of the seas & oceans. Because the deep waters have a higher density than the waters above them. So "waves upon waves": we have the internal waves in the deep-deep ocean & then we have the waves on top of the ocean & then the clouds & so on & so forth. They add to the darkness & disparity & the breaking up & the refracting of light. Now what is interesting is the deep darkness, remember what the Quran says: "they stretch out their hand they can hardly see it". This deep darkness begins below the internal waves in the ocean.
In fact there are certain fish down at those depths which need their own lights in order to be able to see. And amazingly Allah has created these creatures that can actually generate their own lights. Now this is really amazing because of course very recently no one has been able to penetrate & to reach those deep parts of the ocean. It is only with extremely sophisticated modern machinery & submarines & diving suits that someone has been able to go down to that depth. Yet we have the Quran 1400 years ago describing the internal waves of the oceans & the darkness that is there at the depths of the oceans. How on Earth, how in the heavens could a man living in the desert 1400 years ago have known about such detailed information about a science like oceanography? Well, professor Rao who is an expert in marine biology at the king Abdul Aziz university in Jeddah says: "1400 years ago a normal human being could not explain this phenomenon in so much detail. This information must have been coming from a supernatural source."
My dear viewers, this even is not the end of the amazing scientific statements in the Quran. Because the next thing I'm going to deal with is cosmology, the statements in the Quran concerning the universe. Now until recently, or we could say up until the 1960s there was a major controversy between scientists concerning the state of the Universe. Some scientists believe & have begun to develop the idea that the Universe is in the state of flux, that the Universe was in fact expanding. And from this theory of expanding Universe also came another theory which is commonly known today as the Big Bang theory. This is the idea that the Universe had a common origin in a singularity, in a dense, condensed type of matter. The Universe was infinitely small we could say part of dense matter & this infinitely small dense matter then exploded into what is the Universe that we know today. Now this was opposed by the static state theory, the static state theory. And this was very much preferred theory of atheists, that the Universe was the way it was eternally in the past & will keep on being that way eternally in the future.
And this was a theory that was really largely based at least initially & was believed in by Albert Einstein. And many people therefore followed on from that, with this idea of the static state theory. And so this idea of the Big Bang theory which was you know really held by Fred Hoyle. He was the person who supported this theory & Lemaitre who was opposing it with the idea of the Big Bang theory. Now evidence came to light that showed that variations in the light spectrum that were being emitted from galaxies & stars, which is called "Red shift" showed in fact that the Universe is expanding. And it's amazing that this scientific fact, that has now been confirmed, & it is agreed upon by almost unanimously all scientists in the field, that we live in an expanding universe.
And the evidence very-very clearly & strongly suggest that. What does the Quran said 1400 years ago? Before there were telescopes & all the means to discover this information the Quran says in the 51st sura in the 47th ayat: "The Heaven, We have built it with power & we are expanding it." Lets just repeat that again: "The Heaven, We have built it with power & we are expanding it." 1400 years ago the Quran is mentioning how the Universe is expanding. The next most important observational evidence was the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964 by a powerful telescope. And this had been predicted in the Big Bang theory as a relic of the hot-ionised plasma of the early Universe when it first cooled sufficiently to form neutral hydrogen & allowed space to become transparent to light.
And its discovery led to the general acceptance among physicists that the Big Bang is the best model for the origin & evolution of the Universe. What does the Quran say in the 21st sura in the 30th ayat? "Have not those who disbelieved known that the Heavens & the Earth were joined together as one united piece, then We parted them. And we have made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?" The common origin of the Universe or the singularity that scientists believe today the Universe originated from & which lead to the Big Bang. It is considered that the conditions of this singularity were so precise it is almost inconceivable that it could be in that way except that it has been made by an All-wise & powerful Creator. These are some of the amazing things that the Quran is telling us about the origin of the Universe.
The Quran also mentions that Allah turned to the Heavens when it was Dukhan. And the word dukhan in Arabic means smoke. This also accurately describes the hot gaseous mass of the Universe before the galaxies & the stars began to be formed. So here we have the Quran 1400 years ago talking about the expanding Universe, talking about the common origin of the Universe, that the Heavens & the Earth were one, talking about the gaseous state the smoke-like state of the early Universe.
This is in a book 1400 years old. Mentioning facts that scientists have only began to discover today & we have created from every living thing water. It's a fact that every living thing has its basis in & is fundamentally composed of water. You & me are about 70 to 80 % water. We are made of about 70 to 80 % water. The fact that has been mentioned in the Quran 1400 years ago. Will you not believe? Will you now not believe? What will it take to make you realise & to understand that the Quran is the Truth? That Muhammad is the Messenger of God? This is more evidence, the proof that Islam is the Truth. Join us for the next episode when we will be going through some more amazing facts from the Quran. Until then Assalamaleykum Arahmatullahi va Barakatu, may the peace & blessings of Allah & his guidance be with all of you.