Look For the Quran in Science but Never Look For Science in the Quran
By
Naseer Ahmed, New Age Islam
17 June
2022
This is a
supplement to my article:
Should Science
And Religion Be Kept Separate?
To which
the answer was no, they shouldn’t be kept apart. This article adds a necessary
refinement to it as a result of the discussions. The article cited, began with
a quote from the Nobel Laureate Dr Abdus Salam and proceeded to say why he was wrong
and why the Quran and Science should not be kept apart. The relevant quote is
as follows:
“There is a verse that says, We have created everything living out of
water. There are words about heaven and earth were united together and We spilt
them apart. A man who believes in the big bang will perhaps read the Big Bang.
I do not. I do not believe that the Big Bang may last forever by our scientific
thinking. It would be absolutely stupid to connect the science of today to what
is essentially allegorical, religious, spiritual experience which I think is a
totally different dimension”
I had
argued that Dr Salam’s diffidence betrayed the insufficiency of knowledge and
faith in the Quran and that science is bound to converge with the Quran. If the
current scientific thinking has converged with what the Quran says on the same
subject, then that is the truth as far as that subject is concerned and there
is no need for any diffidence. The subsequent article: Dr Abdus
Salam, Science, the Big Bang Theory of Creation, and the Quran, was a detailed response to a
probing question by a young commentator who had asked why I had said that
Salam’s argument expressing doubts about the Big Bang theory was only
rhetorical. I also gave my reasoned opinion on why I thought Salam was
reluctant to endorse the accurate description of the creation event in the
Quran.
Why One
Should Never Look For Science in the Quran
Let us look
at what Salam said and apply it to the situation when the astrophysicists and
cosmologists had assumed a static universe with no beginning and no end, both
in time and space. Any attempt to reconcile the “scientific thinking” then with
what the Quran says on the subject would have been as Dr Salam has said, very
stupid. This is looking for science in the Quran which we can see is stupid
because science is not Al Furqan and is subject to drastic revision as happened
when the Big Bang theory of the creation of the Universe replaced the earlier
static view of a never-changing universe.
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Also Read: Islam Does Not Inhibit Science: Islamic Culture
Has Produced Many First-Rate Scientists Who Were Also Devout In Their Religious
Observances
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Also, there
are writers who try to reconcile the theory of evolution with the Quran when
there are no verses that lead us to such thinking and they, therefore,
reinterpret many of the Quran’s verses to prove the theory of evolution finds
support in the Quran. This is again looking for science in the Quran treating
science as Al Furqan which is an unwise thing to do. The theory of evolution
may get discarded as a good theory which proved to be untrue. Moreover, the
Quran is not a Book of either Science or history and therefore why look for
science or history in the Quran?
However,
Always Look For the Quran in Science
Consider
the verse:
21:30 “Do
not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as
one unit of creation), before we clove them asunder? We made from water every
living thing.”
How does
anyone see what the verse is asking the people to see? What the verse is saying
is not out there for us to see except by collecting relevant data through
methodical observations and its analysis as we do in science. The verse is
therefore clearly asking us to see in science, (if necessary), what the verse
has said. It is the right approach to look for the Quran in science since the
Quran is directly and explicitly asking us to do so. Science is simply the name
for a reliable and proven method of making observations and arriving at
conclusions that are verifiable as to their correctness and the means to
disprove if the conclusions are incorrect.
We have
discussed the verses relating to the creation of the universe with reference to
the current scientific thinking in the article:
The Al Furqan
Prevails As It Must
We
discussed the significant difference between the Quran saying that there was
something before the Big Bang creation and science saying there was nothing.
This was discussed in the article:
The Big Bang
Theory and the Quran
We showed
how developments in physics since the Big Bang theory, are converging with what
the Quran says about what existed before the Big Bang and also about the
process of recreating the Universe afresh at a future date.
We also
explored the meaning of “(21:104) The Day that We roll up the heavens like a
scroll rolled up for books (completed),- even as We produced the first
creation, so shall We produce a new one: a promise….” without the help of
science to begin with. We failed in our understanding of the verse although
what it says is in very plain language and easy to understand. We failed
because we imagined our universe to be spherical in shape and wondered how this
could be rolled up like the scroll of a book that is completed. We then looked
for an explanation in science and found out to our amazement, that the universe
is not spherical in shape as we had imagined, but is flat. The universe is therefore like a roll of paper
which is spread out gradually as its story unfolds, and when the story is
finished, it will be rolled back as a book that is completed. The description
is not only accurate but beautifully describes the expanding universe as the
unfolding of its story and the end as the story getting completed and the book
in the form of the scroll spread out then rolled back.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also Read: Science Should Be Separated From Religion: No
Point in Proving Changing Scientific Theories from Quran
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The
learning from this small experiment is that our correct understanding of the
Quran is prevented by the wrong notions that we have about the subject of the
verse. This explains why many of the verses of the Quran get mistranslated
because what the Quran is saying in plain language goes against the beliefs of
the translator about the same subject.
The series
of articles cited and discussed above demonstrate a systematic methodology for
discovering the meaning of the Quranic verses from the book of our life’s
experiences which includes science.
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Also Read: Islam, Science and the Muslim Predicament
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Conclusion
To
conclude:
1. The first step is to get
the literal meaning of the verse right. This is not a simple matter because a
verse that is difficult to understand is likely to be also mistranslated. For
example, the word “Samavat”, refers to the rest of the universe except the
earth and never to the “blue sky above” but in many verses is translated as “the
sky” which causes confusion. What falls from the “Samavat” to destroy is
therefore not a piece of the sky but an object from above and perhaps a
meteorite. Whenever “Samavat” is translated as “sky” the meaning makes little
scientific sense. There is no word in the Quran that speaks of the sky. Trust
the Quran to say the right thing the right way and never ever deviate from its
literal meaning or resort to fanciful interpretations. If the word is
frequently used in the Quran, determine its meaning from the Quran itself. If
it is used only once or not frequently enough to facilitate determining its
meaning from the Quran, then rely on the dictionary meaning.
2. If the verse does not make
sense from what we know, look for its explanation in science or the relevant
branch of knowledge
3. If a satisfactory
explanation is found that fits the literal meaning of the verse then that is
the correct explanation
4. If there is a difference
between the meaning of the verse and what science tells us, the Quran is right
and scientific thinking has yet to converge with what the Quran has said.
5. Do not look for science in
the Quran even when the subject is covered in the Quran because science may not
have caught up with what the Quran says. We discussed this in the context of
the verses on the creation of the Universe. If we had looked for science in the
Quran on the creation of the Universe, before the 20th century, we would have
found that the two hold opposite views and are irreconcilable. In such a
situation, it means that the Quran is right and science is yet to catch up.
Until then the verses may remain enigmatic but their literal meaning will be
proved right someday in the future.
6. The Quran is not a book of
science and therefore do not even expect to find all of science in the Quran.
7. The Quran is Al Furqan or
always right. Science is not Al Furqan or always right but converges to the
truth eventually but we do not know when. Therefore, looking for an explanation
in science if we can find one makes sense but not vice versa. Science is not Al
Furqan with which we should “interpret” the Quran to bend it to yield a meaning
that conforms with current scientific thinking. That is a very unwise thing to
do.
All my
articles follow the methodology outlined.
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Also Read: God-Realization and Modern Science
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A
frequent contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Naseer Ahmed is an Engineering
graduate from IIT Kanpur and is an independent IT consultant after having
served in both the Public and Private sector in responsible positions for over
three decades. He has spent years studying Quran in-depth and made seminal
contributions to its interpretation.
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-science/quran-science-god-abdus-salam/d/127269
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