4.6 Descriptions Of Natural Phenomena
The Qur’aan calls the reader’s attention to numerous natural phenomena that are indicators of Allaah’s power, wisdom, mercy, etc. As humanity’s understanding of the workings of the natural has increased, the miraculous nature of these Qur’aanic descriptions has become manifest. This is not the forum for a detailed discussion of this issue, but a few examples are mentioned by way of illustration.
“The heaven I created by might, and, verily, I am expanding it.58
The Arabic word moos‘ioon is an active participle. It indicates an ongoing action that is occurring at the present time and will continue into the future. It was not until the invention of the spectrograph and the development of a huge (100 in. diameter) reflecting telescope that Edward Hubble was able to discover other galaxies in 1926 and to document in 1927 the red shift of their spectra that indicates they are moving away from ours. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says about this: “The implications of this discovery were immense. The universe, long considered static, was expanding.”59
Allaah says in Soorah an-Noor
“Have you not seen how Allaah makes the clouds move gently, then joins them together, then makes them a heap? And you see raindrops issuing from their midst. He sends down hail from the sky from mountains of hail therein, causing it to fall on whom he wills and averting it from whom he wills.” 60
Gulf News of Friday, May 30th, 1997 carried the following item:
Earth is bathed by a steady “cosmic rain” of previously undetected objects from outer space that pour vast quanti-ties of water into the atmosphere, according to startling new evidence released Wednesday.
The objects, 20- to 40-ton snowballs the size of two-bedroom houses, streak into the atmosphere by the thousands each day, disintegrate harmlessly 600 to 15,000 miles up and deposit large clouds of water vapor that eventually falls on Earth’s surface as rain, according to Louis A. Frank of the University of Iowa. He led the research team that for the first time has captured images of these objects...taken at both ultraviolet and visible wavelengths by Frank’s specially designed instrument aboard NASA’s year old Polar spacecraft.61
These examples are just the “tip of the iceberg.” There are other remarkably accurate statements about oceanography, geology, cosmogony, physics, biology, embryology, etymology, hydrology and other subjects.62
58 Soorah ath-Thaariyaat (51):47.
59 The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 6, p. 114.
60 Soorah an-Noor (24):43.
61 Gulf News, Friday, May 30th, 1997, p. 10.
62 For further reading, see The Qur’aan and Modern Science, by Maurice Bucaille and The Amazing Qur’an, by Gary Miller.