| Muhammad, peace be on him,
was unlettered. He could neither read nor write, and he grew up in Makkah where there were
no schools. He lived far away from the circles of science and scholars that existed in
Syria, Alexandria, Athens, or Rome. Moreover, the scientific facts mentioned in the Qur'an
were not known in that time, i.e. in the Seventh Century AC. Having studied and examined
the Arabic text of the Qur'an, Dr. Bucaille marvels: I could not find a single error in the Qur'an. I had
to stop and ask myself: if a man were the author of the Qur'an, how could he have written
facts in the Seventh century AC. that today are shown to be in keeping with modern
scientific knowledge? I had to acknowledge the evidence in front of me: the Qur'an did not
contain a single statement that was assailable from a modern scientific point of view. I
repeated the same test for the Old Testament and the Gospels, always preserving the same
objective outlook. In the former, I did not have to go even beyond the first book,
Genesis, to find statements totally out of keeping with what modern science considers to
be indisputable facts.
Dr. Bucaille studied many scientific facts
mentioned in the Qur'an such as the creation of the universe, astronomy, the animal and
vegetation kingdoms, human reproduction, and other related issues. We shall select, for
the sake of brevity, only two of the above issues to draw the attention of the reader to
one of the objectives of this page. [See the Detailed: Quran and
Science]
The Creation of the Heavens and
the Earth
Man's knowledge of the origin of the
universe is very limited. Scientists have proposed hypotheses and theories of evolution
centered around one theme: the primordial fireball and the primordial era of matter and
antimatter. According to these theories, the universe consisted mainly of strongly
interacting particles. The primordial matter and antimatter eventually annihilated each
other and those particles that survived formed the present universe. This theory is given
further credence because it conforms to the basic process of the development of the
universe as presented very simply in the Qur'an. Allah commands His Messenger Muhammad,
peace be on him, to ask the unbelievers:
"Say (to them): Do you disbelieve in
Him Who created the earth in two days? And yet you set up equals to Him, Who is the Rubb
of the worlds. And He placed therein firm mountains above its (the earth's) surface and
blessed it, and in four days equitably apportioned the means of subsistence to all who
would seek it. Then (Allah) turned to the heaven when it was smoke (yet only gaseous) and
said to it and to the earth: Submit willingly or unwillingly! They both said: "We
submit in willing obedience." Then He decreed that they become seven heavens in two
days, and imparted to each (of the seven) its function. And We decorated the heaven
nearest to earth with lights and made them secure. Such is the decree of the All Mighty,
the All-knowing" [Qur'an
41:9-12]
And Allah says:
"Are the unbelievers not aware that
the heavens and the earth were once a single entity which We then separated, and that We
made every living thing out of water? Will they not then (begin to) believe?" [Qur'an
21: 30]
The concept of rending one unit into two or
more, and the celestial "smoke" referred to in the above, confirms what is
considered to be factual scientific data. The English physicist and astronomer, Sir James
Jeans, wrote:
We have found that, as Newton first
conjectured, a chaotic mass of gas of approximately uniform density and of very great
extent would be dynamically unstable: nuclei would tend to form in it, around which the
whole of matter would ultimately condense." On the basis of this theory he proposed
that all celestial objects originated by a process of fragmentation.
The space program helped verify the
homogeneity of the substances of which the moon, the earth, and other planets are formed.
"Such statements in the Qur'an concerning the creation, which appeared nearly
fourteen centuries ago," Dr. Bucaille concluded, “obviously do not lend
themselves to a human explanation."
Human Reproduction
The complexities of human reproduction were
decoded and understood only after the invention of the microscope, which was invented
hundreds of years after the death of Muhammad, peace be on him. But the Qur'an refers to
all the stages through which the human embryo passes. As Allah says:
"Verily, We created man from the
quintessence of mud. Then We placed him as a drop of sperm in a safe depository. Then We
fashioned the drop of sperm into a thing that clings, and then We fashioned the thing that
clings into a chewed lump (of flesh), and We fashioned the chewed flesh into bones. Then
We clothed the bones with (intact) flesh. Then We developed it into a different (form of)
creation. So blessed be Allah, the best of creators." [Qur'an 23:12-14]
The observations of modern science indicate
the stages of human reproduction are:
1)Fertilization of an ovule, which takes
place in the Fallopian tubes. The fertilizing agent is the male sperm.
2)The implantation of the fertilized egg,
which takes place at a precise spot in the female reproductive system. It descends into
the uterus and lodges in the body of the uterus. Once the embryo begins to be observable
to the naked eye, it looks like a small mass of flesh. It grows there in progressive
stages well known today, which lead to the bone structure, the muscles, the nervous and
circulatory system, and the viscera, etc.
In conclusion, Dr. Bucaille ascertains:
More than a thousand years before our time,
at a period when whimsical doctrines still prevailed, men had a knowledge of the Qur'an.
The statements it contains express in simple terms primordial truths that man has taken
centuries to discover by himself.
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